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TWO VAGABONDS 
IN SPAIN 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
MODERN FRENCH PAINTERS 

With 20 Illustrations in colour and 24 
in black and white. 

MOTHER AND CHILD 

Drawings by Bernard Meninsky. 
With letterpress by Jan Gordon. 










\ 


Spanish Courtyard 













TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 

BY JAN AND CORA GORDON 

*4 

ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHORS 



ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 
NEW YORK :: :: :: :: 1923 


Copyright, 1 923, by 
Robert M. McBride & Co. 


(o ^ 


First Published, 1923 


Printed in the United States of America. 


DEC -5 73 

©C1A7G« 210 ' 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I London. 3 

II Jesus Perez. 6 

III The Frontier.15 

IV Medina del Campo.26 

V Avila.37 

VI Madrid.48 

VII A Hot Night.57 

VIII Murcia—First Impressions.67 

IX Murcia—Settling Down.78 

X Murcia—Blas.87 

XI Murcia—The Alpagata Shop.92 

XII Murcia—Bravo Toro.95 

XIII An Excursion.106 

XIV Verdolay—Housekeeping.. . 120 

XV Verdolay—Sketching in Spain.130 

XVI Verdolay—Coneni.139 

XVII Verdolay—The Inhabitants.144 

XVIII Verdolay—The Dance at Coneni’s .... 153 

XIX Murcia—The Laud.158 

XX Alicante.166 

XXI Jijona—The Fiesta.182 

XXII Jijona—Tia Roger.197 

XXIII Jijona—A Day’s Work.204 

XXIV Jijona—The Goatherds.215 

XXV Murcia—Autumn in the Paseo de Corveras . 223 

XXVI Lorca.241 

XXVII Murcia—Last Days.257 

XXVIII The Road Home.264 































LIST OF PLATES 


Spanish Courtyard .. Frontispiece 

FACING 

PAGE 

Carters in the Posada.68 

A Musician Beggar Woman.76 

Girl Singing a Malaguena.218 

The Yalencian Jota Danced by Three Couples .... 220 














































































































































































































































































* 














TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 















































































































































































































































































































CHAPTER I 


LONDON 

W E had tasted of Spain before we had crossed her 
frontiers. Indeed, perhaps Spain is the easiest 
country to obtain samples from without the fa¬ 
tigue of travelling. The Spaniard carries his atmosphere 
with him: wherever he goes he re-creates in his immediate 
surroundings more than a hint of his national existence. 
The Englishman abroad may he English—more brutally 
and uncompromisingly English than the Spaniard is Span¬ 
ish—yet he does not carry England with him. He does 
not, that is, re-create England to the extent of making her 
seem quite real abroad; there she appears alien, remote, 
somewhat out of place. So, too, neither the Russian, the 
German, the Dane, the Portuguese, the Italian, nor the 
American can carry with him the flavour of his homeland 
in an essence sufficiently concentrated to withstand the in¬ 
sidious infiltration of a foreign atmosphere. To some ex¬ 
tent the Scandinavian countries, Norway and Sweden, have 
this power; but Spain is thus gifted in the greatest meas¬ 
ure. These three countries seem to possess a national un¬ 
consciousness which fends them off from too close a contact 
with lands which are foreign to them; perhaps one might 
almost accuse them of a lack of sensitiveness in certain 
aspects. . . . 

However, he the reason what it may, we had gathered 
some experience of Spain in Paris before, and in London 
during the war. What we had tasted we had liked, and so 
when in our low-ceilinged attic refuge in London we gazed 
out upon a sky covered with flat cloud, as though with a 
dirty blanket, and wondered how we might escape in order 


4 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


to seek for our original selves—if they were not irretrieva¬ 
bly lost—we thought of Spain. I think that we went to 
Spain to look for something that the war had taken from 
us. It was as though the low ceiling of our room, and the 
low-lying sky, shut us in with something which was not 
altogether true; indeed, we feel that many years must pass 
before the dissipation of this curious sensation of unreality 
which the war had stamped on to every one, except the 
most callous. 

It is now clear that peace is the normal condition of the 
human race. In the olden days this was not the case, but 
the tendency has been changing, and to-day we increase our 
powers during times of peace, and our powers fall from us 
during the disorganizations of war. The artist, who is the 
barometer of social change, was attuned to peace. In peace 
he exercises important functions. But with the sudden 
outbreak of war the whole foundation of his being was sud¬ 
denly torn away. When war broke out Art for the artist 
seemed almost meaningless. In the face of a human catas¬ 
trophe who could paint pictures? Nero may have fiddled 
while Rome was burning, but it must have been a poor 
meaningless tune that he played, some popular jingle, a 
Roman variation of ‘ ‘ Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-Ay. ” We had come 
at last to a peace which still carried on its breezes all the 
poisons of war, and we, at least, felt an imperative need of 
escape to some place where the war had not been; to some 
place where perchance life had carried on a not too dis¬ 
torted existence since 1914. 

Spain drew us to her more than did Scandinavia. Ro¬ 
mance certainly had a finger in it; the sun perhaps two 
fingers—for we are undoubted sun-worshippers; the music 
of Spain, which had attracted us in Paris, causing Jan to 
abandon the banjo for the guitar, added an appeal; and I 
think an exhibition of Spanish landscapes by Wyndham 
Tryon at the Twenty-One Galleries settled the matter. We 
had been in Majorca before the war, and this combined with 
our experience of Spaniards in Paris had fixed in our minds 


LONDON 


5 


a belief in a simplicity and courtliness of the Spanish peo¬ 
ple which we hoped would he very soothing. Finally, two 
houses were offered by a friend rent free for the whole of 
the summer, together with introductions which would 
smooth the way. We then packed up painting materials, 
stamped clothes into a trunk, worried a strangely assorted 
collection of packages down our narrow and twisted stair¬ 
case into a cab, and so—hey, for the Sun, southward! 

Perhaps the reader should be warned that this is not 
properly a book about Spain in the true sense of the word; 
it is a book about ourselves. We are inclined to doubt 
if, in the true sense of the word, a book can ever be written 
about a country. Curiously enough the native scarcely 
perceives his country at all as long as he is living in it. 
When he travels he may come to a clearer vision, but then 
scarcely perceives with truth the country in which he is 
travelling. We might say that by travelling he makes out 
of the foreign land a sort of inverted image of his home. 
What he relishes abroad is probably what is lacking, what 
he dislikes abroad is perhaps more perfect in his own coun¬ 
try. And thus his vision of abroad makes, as it were, a 
mould, and, if one could pour into it a substance which 
would reproduce the exact reverse as one makes a cast, one 
might procure a fairly faithful image of his unconscious 
judgment of his own land. So perhaps if this book could 
be turned inside out it might be found that, after all, 
stripped of its unessentials, we have been writing a book, 
not about Spain, but about England. Indeed, we have been 
writing about England already—romance, sun, an inter¬ 
esting national music, the guitar, and national unconscious¬ 
ness are not assets to be found here in any overwhelming 
quantities. We must then deny that we are trying to write 
a book of any authority; we do not even assert that our 
facts are correct, even though they are as we saw them; we 
admit a mental astigmatism which we cannot avoid and 
which may have twisted actual happenings or hearings as 
much as optical astigmatism may twist a straight line. 


CHAPTER II 


JESUS PEEEZ 

J ESUS PEREZ took us to Spain in spirit while we were 
still in Paris. We were off to Spain to paint, that 
being the normal course of our lives, but in addition 
Jan had formed a fixed resolution that happen what might 
he was not coming home without having bought a good 
Spanish guitar by the best guitar-maker he could find, while 
I wished to buy a Spanish lute. Arias and Ramirez, the 
two best modern luthiers in Madrid, both had recently died; 
we had, however, the address of the widow of Ramirez, who 
carried on her husband's business, but faintly in Jan's mind 
a cloud hung over the lady’s name. He did not trust her. 
Not she, but Ramirez had made those superfine instruments. 
So we were overjoyed to meet Perez upon the Boulevard 
Montparnasse soon after our arrival in Paris. Perez was 
a friend of ours from the times before the war. He was 
almost a mystery man. Native of Malaga, self-styled 
painter—though he never showed his work—nobody could 
tell how he had managed to make a living during fifteen 
years of apparently unproductive existence. It is true that 
one summer he had disappeared from the quarter, return¬ 
ing late in November browned by the sun, and had ex¬ 
plained that he had been smuggling in the Pyrenees; but 
that event was an exception, and for some months subse¬ 
quently Perez was obviously well off as a result of his risky 
enterprises. Normally, he survived like so many others 
in the Quartier Montparnasse, drawing sufficient nourish¬ 
ment (supplemented very obviously by borrowing) from 
mysterious sources. But while most of his confreres in 
penury had no talents, not even the talent for painting, 
Perez did know the guitar. Rumour said that he was one 

6 


JESUS PEREZ 


7 


of the best amateur players of the Jota Arragonesa in 
Spain. Rumour may have exaggerated without detract¬ 
ing from the real quality of Perez’s exquisite gift. 

We saw a Perez very much polished up by so many years 
of war. He wore a clean straw hat, new clothes of the lat¬ 
est cut, a waistcoat of check with ornamental buttons, 
patent leather boots with a lacquer which flung back the 
rays of the June sun, and heavy owlish eyeglasses of tor¬ 
toiseshell fastened with a broad black ribbon. Indeed, so 
transformed was he, that it was he who recognized us; and 
for some moments we stood trying to pierce through the 
new respectability, as though it were through a disguise. 

Seated together at the “Rotonde” we exchanged some 
petty items of news. Perez had but recently returned from 
Spain; he had held a small exhibition, he said, which had 
provided funds; pictures were selling well in Spain. . . . 
He was delighted to hear of our plan, and thereupon wrote 
for us an introduction to a painter, a friend, who lived in 
Madrid. “Un homme tres serviable,” he said, manufac¬ 
turing a French word out of one Spanish. Jan then asked 
his question. “A good guitar-maker in Spain,” said 
Perez, pinching his lower lip between finger and thumb. 
He shook his head slowly. 

“A good guitar-maker,” repeated Perez. “In Madrid, 
eh? Frankly, no, I do not know of one at the moment. 
And you are going away at once. To-morrow. Well, this 
afternoon I am free, that is good. The best guitar-maker 
at the moment lives here, here in Paris. His name is 
Ramirez. Yes, a relative of that other Ramirez. He has 
found a new form for the guitar. More fine, more power¬ 
ful. Each one like a genuine Torres. You come with me. 
I will show you one or two that he made from an old piano 
which he pulled to pieces for the wood. Exquisite! And 
if you like them, together we will seek out Ramirez and he 
will make you one. He is very busy, oh, excessively busy, 
but he will make you one because he is an old friend of 
mine. ’ ’ 


8 TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 

So the hot afternoon found us sweating up the slopes of 
Montmartre. 

“First,” said Perez, “I will take you to the house of a 
friend who possesses two of Bamirez’ guitars. One is one 
of those made from the old piano. It is marvellous!” 

But when we reached the street he could not remember 
the number. It was four years, he explained, since last 
he had been there. 

“However,” he went on, “not far away is another pos¬ 
sessor of such a guitar; possibly he will be in.” 

Up the hill we went into streets which became more nar¬ 
row and more steep, until at length he led us through a 
courtyard with pinkwashed walls, up five flights of polished 
stairs, to a studio door upon which a visiting card was 
pinned: 

Auguste La Beanche 
Artiste Peintre 
Aquafortist 

The door, under Perez’s knuckles, sounded hollow and 
forlorn. We waited for a while, and Perez was beginning 
to finger his lip when a faint shuffle on the other side of the 
door changed into the noise of locks. The door swung ajar 
revealing a small man, with a thin face and tousled head, 
clad in pyjamas and a Jaeger dressing-gown which trailed 
behind him on the floor. Failing to penetrate to the real 
Perez, as we also had failed, he blinked inquiringly at us. 
A moment of confused explanation ended with a warm 
handshake. Perez explained our presence and our pur¬ 
pose; with protestations of apology for his neglige M. La 
Branche led us into his studio. 

From the card on the door we must presume that M. La 
Branche was both painter and etcher, and pictures hanging 
from the walls, and an etching press almost buried beneath 
a mound of tossed draperies, were evidences of the fact. 
But where he found space either to paint or to etch was 


JESUS PEREZ 


9 


a puzzle. The large studio was crammed with bric-a-brac. 
Indian tables, Chinese tables, wicker chairs, lacquer stools, 
screens, figures in armour, large vases, birdcages and in¬ 
numerable articles strewed the floor, across which narrow 
lines of bare parquet showed like channels upon the chart 
of an estuary. Over the chairs were heaped draperies, on 
the tables smaller bric-a-brac crowded together. Upon a 
sofa thrust to one side sat a woman methodically sewing 



at the hem of a long sheet. She took no notice of us, nor 
of M. La Branche, but continued her sewing, careful, how¬ 
ever, not to swing her arm too wide for fear of banging in¬ 
to several guitars and other musical instruments, which al¬ 
most disputed possession of the sofa with her. 

Having cleared a table and sufficient chairs, M. La 
Branche gave us the anglais, by the usual complex French 
method. Then from amongst his guitars he selected that 
made by Ramirez, and sitting down began to play. It is 



















10 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


strange how a man’s personality appears in everything he 
does. M. La Branche in his paintings was an expert 
painter rather than an artist; his etchings, large colour 
plates, showed a similar skill with the burin. His music was 
of the same nature. Everything that a practiced player 
should do, he did; his nimble fingers raced up and down the 
frets, his tempo and his modulations were impeccable, yet 
he did not make music. But we had not come with the 
intention of hearing music, but of hearing the qualities and 
power of the guitar, and this was, perhaps, more ably 
shown by the technicalities of M. La Branche than it might 
have been in the hands of a more artistic though less able 
musician. 

The shop of Ramirez, the luthier, was down the hill, and 
to this, thoroughly satisfied about the excellence of his 
instruments, we went, Perez grumbling to us in undertones. 

“That fellow La Branche—he does not play Spanish 
music. No—he comes from Toulouse. That explains it. 
It is the talent of the South of France, all on the top, all 
lively and excitable and showing off—that is how it is. 
Now I tell you, Monsieur and Madame Gordon, just because 
of that the Frenchman never will be able to understand our 
music. You English are nearer to us. You, when you 
have acquired ability, will play our music with much more 
insight and much more sensibility than that La Branche.” 

This comforted us exceedingly, for one day in wrath 
Modigliani, the Italian painter, had said that it was mere 
impertinence for an Englishman to think that he could un¬ 
derstand the subtleties of the music of Spain. 

Ramirez almost makes his guitars out in the street. His 
workshop was about ten feet square with a door six feet 
wide. Here was a piece of pure Spain, though we could 
not recognize it (at the moment having no data), ten feet 
square, thrust bodily into the lower floor of a French house. 
The only light came in from the door, hut the door was 
nearly as broad as the room. Almost blocking up the en¬ 
trance, Ramirez, a burly, blue-jowled Spaniard, with some- 


JESUS PEREZ 


11 


thing of the physical construction of a boxer, was working 
at delicate shavings of wood. Behind him the wall was 
hung with templates, cut from white wood, of the parts of 
the instruments he was making, guitars and lauds and ban- 
durrias, strange instruments which Europe, outside of 
Spain, scarcely knows. On a shelf at the back of the small 
shop were heaped unfinished bandurrias bound with string, 
for the glue to become hardened in them. The workshop 
of Ramirez was not what we had expected. One is, I think, 
justified in expecting a neatness, a delicacy, about the place 
where fine musical instruments are made. Had Ramirez 
been a maker of chairs, or even of cart-wheels, his work¬ 
shop, though small, would have appeared appropriate; but 
that, from this rough place, could come out “the most dif¬ 
ficult of musical instruments to make” disturbed one’s 
sense of suitability. 

The greeting which Ramirez gave us touched with doubt 
the picture which we had conceived of the amiability of the 
Spaniard. There was no cordiality in him. Some of his 
aloofness cleared away when he had penetrated through 
the disguise of a dandy to the real Perez beneath, but he 
continued his occupation, and to the statement that we 
wished him to make a guitar for Jan he shrugged his fat 
shoulders. He declared that he had already too much 
work. 

“Those two instruments, for instance,” he said, point¬ 
ing to two unfinished guitars elaborately ornamented stand¬ 
ing in a corner, “I have already been nine months over 
those, and have not had time to finish them. It is true 
they are exhibition instruments, for shops, and therefore 
have little if any interest for me.” 

Perez led him on with compliments, thawing away his 
frostiness gradually with Jan’s admiration for the guitar 
of M. La Branche. Suddenly Ramirez put down his tools. 

“Look here,” he said, “I’ll make the Senor a guitar. 
Three hundred francs is the price, and it will be finished in 
three months.” 


12 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


The bargain concluded, Ramirez picked up one of the 
unfinished instruments. He handed it to Jan, exhorting 
him to explore with a finger the exquisite workmanship of 
its interior. He rapped on the belly with his knuckle, and 
at the sound of its deep musical boom he smiled for the 
first time. Ramirez, having thawed, did not freeze up 
again. He began explaining the novel shape of his instru¬ 
ment, a shape which had been worked out for him by a 
mathematical philosopher. He said that the guitar was the 
most difficult of musical instruments to make, requiring a 
volume of tone which had to be produced from strings easy 
to pluck and finger. A problem very difficult to solve. 

“And the guitar I made for you,” he said, turning to 
Perez, “you gave it to S-f ” 

“Yes,” said Perez. 

“See here,” said Ramirez, turning to us, “I make a 
guitar, an excellent one, one of my best. This fellow comes 
to see me, he hears the instrument. He says to me, ‘ Rami¬ 
rez, keep that guitar for me, and I will at once go to work 
in a French munition factory, and I will work like a slave, 
and every week I will send you money until the guitar is 
paid for. ’ And I agree. And he goes and makes aero¬ 
planes, and does honest work for the first time in his life, 
I believe, and every week he sends money to me. And the 
week it is all paid up he stops work and goes off with the 
guitar. And he is crazy about the instrument. And he 

goes back to Spain and then he hears S-playing. He is 

so enraptured by the wonderful playing of the man, that 

he runs home, fetches his guitar, and thrusts it into S--’s 

hands, exclaiming: ‘Here is an instrument worthy of you. 
It is too good for me, for I am a mere bungler beside you.’ 
And so he gives away the guitar that he has laboured for. 
Ah yes, you villain, I have heard of you.” 

As we went down the hill, Perez tried to explain away 
this generosity so characteristic of his impulsive nature. 

“It is not as though I would have played on the instru¬ 
ment again after having heard S-touch it. Every time 






JESUS PEREZ 


13 


that I wished to play I would have thought, ‘Ah yes, but 
if only he were playing it and not I.’ And I had to give it 
to him, or perhaps I would never have been able to play 
again. 9 ’ 

He asked us to come that evening to a certain small cafe 
in the Rue Campagne Premier; some other Spaniards were 
to come also and there was to be playing and singing. We 
were to come after the legal closing time and we were to 
thump on the shutters. 

In the night, in the dark, we rapped upon the rusty iron 
shutters, and one by one, like conspirators, were admitted 
into the dimly-lit cafe. It was a small place, characteristic 
of Paris, a combination of huvette with zinc bar, and cheap 
restaurant with marble-topped tables. Five years ago a 
good meal could be bought here for less than a franc. Be¬ 
hind the bar bottles and glass vats reached up to the ceiling; 
upon the dirty, green oil-painted walls, cheap almanacs and 
trivial popular prints hung, together with excellent draw¬ 
ings and sketches presented to Madame by her clients. 
One by one the invites slipped in. Madame and her two 
girl waitresses laughed and giggled at the kitchen door, 
while the patron, grey-moustached, hollow-eyed and cada¬ 
verous, uncorked the bottles of wine behind the bar. 

Here again for several hours the Spaniards re-created 
Spain. Perez is a player of temperament. Half of his 
skill and art he appears to suck from his audience. Thus 
at first he plays but indifferently well; but any music will 
rouse a crowd of Spaniards. To the growing excitement 
Perez responds, playing the better for it, thus creating 
more enthusiasm, and these interchanges continue, until 
he reaches the limit of his ability. But he is so sensitive 
to his audience that one indifferent person can take the 
edge off all his power. This night there was no one unre¬ 
sponsive. The playing of Perez became more and more 
brilliant. With his nails he rasped deep chords from his 
responsive instrument; to and fro he beat the strings 
in the remorseless rhythm of Jota Arragonesa. In the 


14 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


dimly lit cafe the dark figures and the sallow faces of the 
Spaniards were crowded about him in an irregular circle. 
‘‘Ole! Ole!” they cried, and clapped their hands in time 
with the music. The air within the cafe throbbed and pul¬ 
sated with the music. “Mais, c’est tres bien,” exclaimed 
Madame at intervals from her corner. “C’est tres amu- 
sant, hein?” Two of the younger men were murmuring 
to the waitresses and were making them titter. 

“Come,” exclaimed Perez at last, “enough of this piece 
playing. Let us have a song. Vamos! who will sing?” 

But something, possibly my presence, deterred the Span¬ 
iards from singing. They were shy as a group of school¬ 
boys. One at last began to chant in a high quavering 
falsetto, but before the first half of his copla was ended he 
broke down into a laugh of hysterical shyness. 

“Why then,” cried Perez, “I’ll have to sing myself, and 
Heaven knows I’ve got no voice.” 

The Spaniard believes that any singing is better than 
no singing. One of his chief pursuits in life is that of hap¬ 
piness— “allegre” he calls it. This allegre is produced 
not by perfect results but by evidence of good intentions. 
He would rather have a bad player who plays from his 
heart than a good player who plays for his pocket. Any 
singing, then, so long as it is of the right nature, will suffice, 
no matter what its musical effect. Perez’s singing had 
allegre, but no music. He lowed like a calf, rising up into 
strange throaty hoarseness like a barrow merchant who 
has been crying his goods all day, and descending into dim 
growls of deep notes. But even he at last tired; and after 
Madame had been yawning for some while, after the last 
bottle of wine had been drained of its last drops, we slipped 
out one by one into the moonlit streets of Paris and said 
our farewells on the Boulevard. 


CHAPTER III 


THE FRONTIER 

1 WONDER what Charlemagne would have done if one 
had whisked him down from Paris to the Spanish 
Frontier in something under twenty hours f Probably 
the hero would have been paralysed with terror during the 
journey and would have revenged himself upon the magi¬ 
cian by means of a little stake party. 

But what would have been magic and miracle to Charle¬ 
magne remains in one’s mind as a jumble—the interior of 
a second-class carriage; antimacassars; an adolescent who 
ate lusciously a basket of peaches, thereby reminding us 
that French peaches ripen early in June; intrusive knees 
and superfluous legs; an obese man who pinched my knee 
in his sleep, probably from habit; touches of indigestion 
which made one fidget, and in the dawn a little excitement 
roused by observing the turpentine tapping operations 
at work on the pine-trees by the side of the railroad— 
cemented together by the thick atmosphere of a summer’s 
night enclosed between shut windows. 

It is a strange fact that the more perfect do we make 
travelling, the more tedious does it become—I wonder 
whether the same may not apply to almost all progress in 
civilization. 

The most primitive aspect of travel is that of walking, 
and even upon the most tedious of walks the exercise itself 
seldom degenerates into definite boredom, one is never far 
away from one’s fellow men, yet even if one is quite alone 
the mere fact of walking is an occupation which cannot be 
despised; of riding similar things may be said. Coaching 
may have had its inconveniences, yet a coach drive cannot 


16 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


have been lacking in definite interest. One was in very 
close contact with one’s fellow passengers, coaching made 
as strange bedfellows as any adversity, and the journey 
was seldom so short that one could enjoy a sort of snuffy 
insulation from one’s fellows—mutual discomforts, ever 
mutual terrors of footpads made a definite bond of hu¬ 
manity. 

It is true that in all these primitive processes the act of 
getting from here to there is prolonged—perhaps extremely 
prolonged—but mere duration is not tedium. If the act 
itself is interesting and vivid then the act itself is worth 
while. To-day the act of travelling by a fast train is 
scarcely worth while—the traveller can almost count it out 
as so much time lost out of life. I fear that when the aero¬ 
plane is perfected journeys will be performed in a tedium 
absolutely unrelieved, and those patients who have to un¬ 
dertake journeys would be advised to take a mild anaes¬ 
thetic at the beginning. 

What is missing to-day from the act of travelling—and 
what lacks from much modern civilization—is the expecta¬ 
tion of the unexpected; the sense of adventure, the true 
sauce of life. 

Now to have the true sense of adventure it is not neces¬ 
sary that one should always be expecting to meet a lion 
round the corner. Any little thing will do, anything not 
before experienced, anything that will give the imagina¬ 
tion that extra fillip of interest which will convince it that 
the world will always remain a Fortunatus purse of new 
things to learn, anything that will make positive the fact 
that the act of living is also the act of growing,—anything 
of this nature will contribute to the sense of adventure. 

But the trend of civilization to-day is that all these little 
interests are being quietly but very effectively crushed: 
we fling them beneath the wheels of railway trains and into 
the cogs of factories, with the result that only those experi¬ 
ences which are too large for us to fling thus are allowed to 
flourish. We have, in fact, almost cleared away the little 


THE FRONTIER 


17 


things and left only the big. Now, if we turn the corner, 
either there is nothing at all or, in one case out of a hun¬ 
dred, we find the lion. In our railway travelling to-day, 
either nothing happens or there is a railway accident; but 
we have turned so many corners in our lives which led to 
the mere blankness of more empty road, that the possibility 
of the lion has almost faded from our minds—and’so the 
sense of adventure in little, the true sense of adventure, is 
in danger of atrophy. 

Some day, I feel sure that this sense of adventure will 
take a revenge on the civilization which would destroy it. 
We kill off birds and caterpillars flourish. Some worm lies 
near the heart of things ready to gnaw at the right moment. 
I fear that never will they apply “preservation laws’’ to the 
sense of adventure, or we, as adventurers, properly appre¬ 
ciated, should be in receipt of a scholarship or of a civil list 
pension. 

We were too dazed by the drug of twenty hours of tedium 
and sleeplessness to suck any adventure from the passage 
through the French Customs House at Hendaye. But this 
experience roused us so that we were quite mentally awake 
by the time that we reached Irun. Here a problem con¬ 
fronted us. 

We had in our large leather trunk a good many yards of 
government canvas, several pounds’ worth of paints, and 
ten pounds in weight of preparation for turning the govern¬ 
ment canvas into material for painting upon. We had 
heard that the Spanish customs were very strict; very strict 
in theory, that is. 

“But if they worry you, bribe them a bit,” had said a 
friend. Were these things contraband? If so, how much 
was one to bribe, and how was one to do it? There are 
plenty of men with nerve enough to try to tip Charon for 
his trip over the Styx, but Jan is not one of these. 

Now for a man of Jan’s kind to attempt a delicate piece 
of palmed bribing often results in things worse than if he 
had left well alone. Ten to one there is a fumble and the 


18 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


coin drops to the floor beneath the nose of the chief bug-a 
bug. So, fingering two unpleasantly warm five-peseta 
pieces in his pocket, he prayed fervently to kind Oppor¬ 
tunity to step in. 

To his prayer the goddess answered. We had brought 
with us from our Paris studio a mosquito curtain which 
once before had been used in Majorca. As our baggage 
was packed in London we had, rather than undo straps and 
locks, tied this mosquito curtain, wrapped in clean brown 
paper, on to the outside of our suit-case. Upon this the 
authorities flung themselves. 

“Hi!” they cried. “You will pay duty on this, it is 
new.” 

Two gendarmes and a clerk tore off the paper, pitched 
the mosquito curtain into a pair of scales, weighed it and 
wrote out the bill. All the while we had been clamouring, 
with a sudden memory from Hugo: “Antigua, antigua, 
antigua. . . .” 

This clamour became suddenly effective as soon as the 
officials had nothing to do than to collect the money. In¬ 
stead of cash we gave them a chorus of “Antigua, antigua.” 
The clerk and the two gendarmes then began what seemed 
to be an impromptu imitation of Miss Loie Fuller in her 
celebrated skirt dancing—mosquito curtain whirled this 
way and that in voluptuous curves. They were looking for 
evidence. Suddenly I pointed out a spot where perchance 
some full-blooded mosquito had come to a sudden death in 
1913, when the world was yet at peace. The mosquito cur¬ 
tain was refolded, the bill torn up. They were quite per¬ 
emptory with the rest of our luggage; so Jan dropped the 
two warm five-peseta pieces back into his pocket. 

However much one may be in a country, one never feels 
that one is in the country until the door leading out of the 
customs house has been passed. So we never really 
thought of ourselves as being in Spain until we stepped on 
to the platform where the train for Madrid was standing. 


THE FRONTIER 


19 


With a bitter shock, we realized that it was a chill day and 
raining. We had come all the way from England, hunting 
the sun, to be greeted in June by a day which would fit, 
both in temperature and atmosphere, the tail-end of a 
March at home. 

Of those minor adventures which make life so valuable, 
some of the finest flowers amongst them which may be 
picked are the delicate first impressions of a new country. 
These impressions have a flavour all their own; they are 
usually compressed within the space of one hour or so, and 



once experienced they never return. New impressions in¬ 
deed one may gather by the score, but those first, fine 
savourings of the new can never be retasted. 

We had expected so much from Spain. We had hoped at 
the first moment to open out our arms to her sun, to satiate 
our colour sense with the blueness of her skies—we were 
received instead with this grey, gloomy weather. How can 
one describe the revulsion? It would be an exaggeration to 
say that it was as though we had touched a corpse where we 
had expected to find a living man, but the revulsion was of 
this nature though perhaps less poignant. 










20 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


I left Jan to finish with the larger luggage and, securing 
the aid of a porter, set out to look for an hotel. At the exit 
of the station I was accosted by a sallow man with a large, 
peaked jockey cap pulled down over a thin face. 

He said: “Hey, Senora! Hotel? Spik Engleesh. 
Yes.” 

“We don’t want a dear place,” I answered in English. 
“We want a cheap one, understand?” 

“Hotel. Spik Engleesh. Yes,” replied the tout. 

“Cheap hotel—cheap,” I said. 

“Hotel. Spik Engleesh—yes,” said he. 

“Puede usted recomendarme una fonda barata?” said 
I, out of the conversation book, though the “barata” 1 at 
the end was my own. 

But the tout turned sulky and would not answer—I 
suppose he thought his fee would diminish if he were enticed 
into Spanish. The porter stood on one side; he was a 
small, inadequate man and he sniffed continually. Whether 
he had caught cold from the rain, or whether he was ex¬ 
pressing his private opinion of travellers, I did not learn. 
Jan was arranging about our trunk and a hold-all; I had in 
my charge two thermos flasks, a camera, two rucksacks— 
memories of days in the German Tyrol before the war— 
and a suit-case which had been with us in Serbia and which 
still bore the faint traces of a painted red cross, but the 
cat had for the last two years been sharpening her claws 
upon it and the leather now looked something like * ‘ Teddy 
Bear” material. These I distributed between the porter 
and the tout, and, trusting to Providence and my own 
powers of observation, we entered Iran. 

Where was the queer magic which lies in the first impres¬ 
sions of a new land, the dreamlike quality, the unreality 
which almost puts one’s feet for a moment into Fairyland? 
Spain had played a nasty trick upon us; the grey sky and 
the low-lying cloud and the drizzling rain had nothing of 
Fairyland for us. With head held low against the drizzle 


i Cheap. 



THE FRONTIER 


21 


one was conscious of nothing but a wall on the right hand 
and of dirty pavement beneath the feet. 

The tout led me into the first house we reached. There 
was a narrow passage which passed by a room of a dingy 
whiteness; but the tout showed me on, up some stumbly 
stairs and through a spring door. We came into a dark 
room in which, by means of the light filtering through the 
slats of the closed shutters, could be seen the dim outlines 
of a bed and of a tin wash-hand-stand. 

“Ocho pesetas,’’ said the tout. 

“Por todo,” I answered. 

“Todo—todo—comida y toda,” protested the tout. I 
had been waiting for this moment. In the conversation 
book which I had been studying was a phrase which had 
caught my fancy; it meant “no extras,” but it was much 
more beautiful. The time had come. 

“No hay extraordinario?’’ said I sternly. 

“No, Senora, no,” said the tout, spreading out his hands. 

The matter having been thus settled, he took me down¬ 
stairs again; and, in the dingy white dining-room, intro¬ 
duced me to a plump woman, the proprietress. I was 
ravenously hungry; the tables were laid. I asked: 

“What time is lunch?” 

“At two, Senora.” 

I was dismayed. It was now eleven o’clock—we had 
eaten little since the night before. 

“But,” I stammered, “I am hungry. Tengo hambre.” 
My memory shuffled with conversation-book sentences and 
faint recollections of Majorca, but could find nothing about 
the minutiae of food. 

“Tengo hambre,” I repeated desperately. Suddenly in¬ 
spiration came to me. I made motions of beating up an 
omelet and clucked like a hen that has laid an egg. 

For a moment there was a silence, a positive kind of 
silence, which is much more still than mere absence of 
noise. Then a roar of laughter went up. The fat hostess 
shook like a jelly, the tout guffawed behind a restraining 


22 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


hand—he had not yet received his tip—while an old woman 
who had been sitting in one of the darker corners, went 
off: 

“Ck! Ck! Ck! He! He! He! Ck! Ck! Ck! He! 
He! He!” 

At this moment Jan arrived, having deposited the bigger 
luggage and having been informed that the train to Avila, 
our first stopping-place, went out at 8 a. m. I led him 
along the dark passage and upstairs. He flung wide the 
shutters. The window looked into a deep, triangular well 
at the bottom of which was a floor of stamped earth, a wash- 
tub and a hen-coop. Windows of all sizes pierced the walls 
at irregular intervals and across the well were stretched 
ropes, from some of which flapped pieces of damp linen or 
underclothes. In the light of the open window the room 
was dingy. We wondered if there were bugs in it, for we 
had been cautioned against these insects. 

But the room did not smell buggy; it had a peculiar smell 
of its own. The strong characteristics of odours need more 
attention than novelists give them. For instance, I remem¬ 
ber that German mistresses had a faint vinegary scent, hut 
French governesses an odour like trunks which had been 
suddenly opened. 

This room had an austere smell. It smelt, I don’t know 
how, Roman Catholic: not of incense nor of censers, hut of 
a flavour which, by some combination of circumstances, we 
have associated with Roman Catholicism in bulk. The bed¬ 
room door was largely panelled with tinted glass; it had a 
very flimsy lock, but we did not fear that we would be 
murdered or burgled in our bed. 

The omelet was ready when we came down. The dining¬ 
room had two doors, one leading to the kitchen, one up 
some steps and into the street. There was a broad stretch 
of window and almost all the other walls of the room were 
covered with big mirrors. 

About five grim people, mostly clad in black—including 
the old lady—sat in the room and stared at us as we ate. 


THE FRONTIER 


23 


We could not avoid this disconcerting gaze—look where we 
would we either caught a human eye or else, what was 
worse, we were fascinated by a long procession of eyes pass¬ 
ing away into the dim mysteries of reflection and re-reflec¬ 
tion of the mirrors. We had to choose between the gaze of 
one real old lady or of twenty-five reflected old ladies, of one 



callow youth or of twenty-five youths diminishing towards 
the infinite. The audience stared at us as we ate our 
omelet, w T atched the fruit—apricots, cherries and hard 
pears—with which we finished the meal, and noted each 
sip of coffee. At last, unable to bear any longer the em¬ 
barrassment of this mechanically intensified curiosity, we 
took refuge in our bedroom and lay down. We then noted 

































24 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


that the bed was too small, all the rest of the furniture, on 
the contrary, being much too big. 

We rested till lunch. The omelet and the fruit had but 
filled some of the minor vacancies within us and we were 
ready again on the stroke of two. Once more we faced the 
Spanish stare and all the reflected repetitions of it. A fair 
number of persons lunched at the hotel. As they came in 
the women sat themselves directly at the table, but the men 
without exception went to the far corner where, suspended 
against the wall, was a small tin reservoir with a minute tap 
and beneath it a tiny basin. Each man rinsed his hands in 
the infinitesimal trickle, before he sat down to dinner. 
Why the men and women made this distinction we could 
not guess. It seemed to be a custom and not to be de¬ 
pendent upon whether the hands were dirty or not. Even 
if the hands had been dirty the small amount of water used 
would not have cleaned them. 

In the centre of the dining table were white, porous ves¬ 
sels containing drinking water. The water oozes through 
the porous clay and appears on the outside of the vessel 
as a faint sweat. This layer of moisture evaporates and 
keeps all the water in the vessel at several degrees cooler 
than the surrounding atmosphere. 

Between mouthfuls of soup and wedges of beef the diners 
were watching us. As soon as the meal was over we fled 
into the streets of Irun. One cannot call Irun Spanish. 
It is abominably French, though France is pleasant in its 
own place. The cafe in the little plaza is French, with a 
French terrasse, French side screens of ugly ironwork and 
glass, and faces a square full of shady trees between which 
one sees modern fortifications of French appearance. So 
we sat sipping coffee and we said to ourselves: “Forget 
that you are in Spain. Put off your excitement. Don’t 
waste your sensations with false sentiment.” 

Nor did the fact that all the wording on the shops was 
Spanish, nor even the sight of a building of pure modern 
Spanish architecture rouse us from our cloudy resignation. 


THE FRONTIER 


25 


The building which towered into some six stories by the 
side of the railway was of a maroon brick. The lower 
story, including the entrance door, was decorated with ap¬ 
plique in the design which the French used to call “Part 
nouveau,’’ and which now is confined almost exclusively 
to the iron work on boulevard cafes. It is marked by ex¬ 
aggerated curves. The whole bottom story of this build¬ 
ing was sculptured in this fantastic fashion; in order to fit 
in with the decorations the front door was wider at the top 
than it was at the bottom, while the windows were of every 
variety of shape, squashed curves, dilated hearts, indented 
circles and so on. Above this story the building rose 
gravely brick save for the corners, which were decorated 
with bathroom tiles of bad glaze upon which flowers had 
been painted; roses, violets and pansies: the top story, how¬ 
ever, was part Gothic, part Egyptian, with a unifying inter¬ 
mixture of more bathroom tiles. 

A munition millionaire went to an art dealer saying he 
wanted a picture, but he didn’t mind what sort of a picture 
it was provided it looked expensive. We imagined that the 
architect of this house had received a similar order. Later 
on we were undeceived. 

A yellow tram went by bearing the name “Fuentarabia.” 
Having heard eulogies of this place, we decided to go. We 
reached the terminus of the tramway and the conductor 
told us we were there. Since then we have met so many 
people who were in ecstasies about the beauties of Fuentar¬ 
abia, about its pure Spanish character, etc., etc., that we 
are still wondering if we went to Fuentarabia after all. 


CHAPTER IV 


MEDINA DEL CAMPO 

I F civilization were without a flaw, the happy civilized 
traveller could pass through and circumambulate a 
foreign country yet never come into closer contact with 
the inhabitants than that transmitted through a Cook’s 
interpreter. So that if you want to learn anything about 
a country, either you must put a sprag into the wheels of 
this civilization or you must let Opportunity do it for you. 
Opportunity is a very complaisant goddess: give her an inch 
and the ell at least is offered to you. She smiled upon us 
when we decided to stay the night at Irun; once more she 
smiled when the porter told us that the train to Avila left 
about eight o’clock, so we humped the two rucksacks and 
the suit-case from the inn to the station, got our trunk and 
hold-all from the baggage office and went to buy our tickets. 
Then we realized what Opportunity had been up to. The 
ticket clerk refused to give us tickets to Avila. 

“Why not?” 

“The train does not go through Avila, it goes to Madrid 
by the other branch through Segovia. The train by Avila 
goes at four.” 

“Where, then, does it branch off?” 

“At Medina del Campo.” 

“Then give us tickets to Avila and we will wait at Medina 
del Campo.” 

But the authorities did not approve of this novel idea. 
It seemed that the through-ticket system had not become 
the custom in Spain. We must then take tickets to Medina 
or wait in Irun till the proper, respectable Avila train 
should go, so to the astonishment of the booking clerk we 
said: 


MEDINA DEL CAMPO 


27 


“All right, give us tickets for Medina.” 

I do not believe that any pleasure traveller had stopped 
at Medina before we did. That is the impression we re¬ 
ceived, both from the behaviour of the porters at Irun and 
of those at Medina itself. 

The scenery from the railway was, as scenery always is, 
fascinating because of one’s elevation and the scope of one’s 
view, tiring because of its continuous movement. We 
passed through mountains worthy of Scotland, very Scotch 



in colour, and at last came out upon the big plain of Val¬ 
ladolid. 

While we were streaming across this and the mountains 
were fading slowly into a distant blue the luncheon-car 
waiter announced his joyful news. We had heard that 
living in Spain was going to he dear, so, with some trepida¬ 
tion, we decided to take that train luncheon—for our finan¬ 
cial position did not encourage extravagance. The whole 
trip was, in theory, to come within the limits of Jan’s gratu¬ 
ity—about £120. We had calculated the railway travelling 
as £50 in all; this gave us £70 for all other expenses, in- 



28 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


eluding the purchase of the musical instruments upon which 
we had set our minds, and we hoped to stay for four or five 
months. Yet in spite of the need for economy luncheon 
called us if only as an experience. 

The meal cost us about three and fourpence apiece: it 
was a complicated affair of many courses—even in a Soho 
restaurant the same would have come to about ten shillings, 
so that the spirit of economy in us was cheered and in¬ 
spirited. Of our fellow passengers we remember nobody 
save a gigantic priest who waddled slowly along the cor- 
riders, carrying, suspended on a plump finger, a very small 
cage in which, like a mediaeval captive in a “little ease,” 
was a canary almost as large as its prison. 

Medina station looked like an exaggerated cart-shed on 
a farm; two long walls and a roof of corrugated iron— 
there were no platforms, only one broad pavement along 
one of the walls. A small bookstall was against the wall 
and further along the pavement a booth of jewellery. This 
booth had glass windows and “Precio Fijo” 1 —“No bar¬ 
gaining,” in other words—was painted across the glass in 
white letters. 

Why- Spaniards, en route, should have mad desires to 
purchase jewellery, we have not learned, but these jewellery 
booths are common on Spanish stations. The jewellers 
seem to detest bargaining, for these words always appear 
on the windows. I suppose the fact that the purchaser of 
jewellery has got to catch a train may give him some oc¬ 
cult advantage over the seller. One may imagine him 
slamming his last offer down on the counter and sprinting 
off with the coveted trinket to the train, while the de¬ 
frauded merchant is struggling with the door-handle of 
his booth—so “No Bargaining” is painted up, very white 
and very positive. 

As we had nine hours to wait, there was no need to hurry, 
so we allowed the crowd to drift out of the platform before 
we began to see about the disposal of our luggage. Stum- 


i Fixed prices. 


MEDINA DEL CAMPO 


29 


bling about in Hugo Spanish we discovered that, owing to 
the receipt that had been given us at Irun, our big trunk 
would look after itself until claimed, but that there was 
no luggage office or other facility for getting rid of our 
smaller baggage. We, however, insinuated understanding 
into the head of a porter, who thereupon led us to a door 
amongst other doors in the wall labelled “Fonda.” We 
came into a huge hall. Across one end stretched a majestic 
bar four feet high, of elaborately carved wood, upon the 
top of which were vases of fruits, tiers of bottles and glitter¬ 
ing machines for the manufacture of drink. Three long 
tables were in the room, two spread simply with coffee- 
cups. The third table occupied the full length of the 
middle of the room. It seemed spread for some Lord 
Mayor’s banquet. Snowy napery was covered along the 
centre with huge cut-glass dishes, stacked with fruit, al¬ 
ternated with palms flanked by champagne bottles and 
white and red wine bottles. Fully fifty places were laid, 
each place having seven or eight plates stacked upon it 
while the cutlery sparkled on either hand. A cadaverous, 
unshaven waiter lounged about amongst this magnificence 
and lazily flicked at the flies with his napkin. 

This huge, deserted room, expectant of so many guests, 
made one think of the introduction to a fairy story: one 
could have sat the mad hatter, the dormouse and the March 
hare down there, but one could never imagine that fifty 
passengers could in sober earnestness crowd to have supper 
at Medina del Campo upon the same day. No, rather here 
was one flutter of the dying pomp and majesty of Spain. 

We placed our bags in a corner of the pretentious room 
and went from the station to look for the town. It was no¬ 
where to be seen. A white road deep in dust gleamed be¬ 
neath the afternoon sun and led away across the ochreous 
plain, but, of town, not a sign. Yet the white road was the 
only road; Medina must be somewhere, so off we walked. 
The plain was not quite flat, it flowed away in undulations 
which appeared shallow, but which proved sufficiently deep 


30 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


to swallow up all signs of Medina del Campo at the dis¬ 
tance of a mile. 

First we came to a line of little brightly coloured hovels, 
square boxes, many of only one room, then to a church, an 
ancient Spanish-Gothic church surrounded by gloomy trees. 
Suddenly the road turned a corner and w6 were almost in 
the middle of the town. Medina was Spanish enough. 
Here was the plaza at the end of which towered a high 
cathedral decorated with colour and with carving. The 
plaza lay broad and shining beneath the sunlight; loungers 
sprawled in the shadows beneath the small, vivid green 
trees, and in the deep stone arcades which edged the open 
square the afternoon coffee-drinkers, clad in cool white, 
lolled at the cafe tables. 

In the centre of the plaza was a fountain running with 
water, and about it came and went a continual procession 
of women bearing large, white anaphoras upon their hips, 
children carrying smaller drinking vessels, and men wheel¬ 
ing long, barrow-like frameworks into which many anapho¬ 
ras were placed. The shops and cafes were painted in gay 
colours which were brilliant in the sun and which con¬ 
trasted pleasantly with the crude—as though painted— 
green of the trees and the clear, soothing hue of the sky. 

I know that historical things have happened at Medina 
del Campo, but we are not going to retail second-hand his¬ 
tory. To us, as living beings, it is far more important 
that we bought our first oily, almondy Spanish cakes here 
than that Santa Teresa (who started off at the age of ten 
years to be martyred by the Moors) founded a convent in 
the town. 

Medina is a dead place and must be typical of Spain. 
It has a market, a plaza and a few ragged fringes of streets 
more than half full of collapsing houses, and in this gay¬ 
looking remnant of past glory are at least three enormous 
churches with monasteries in attendance. But even the 
churches are falling into ruin and the storks’ nests are 
clustered flat on the belfries, while Hymen’s debt collectors, 


MEDINA DEL CAMPO 31 

clapping their beaks, gaze down from aloft into the empty- 
roadways. 

Sunset had played out a colour symphony in orange ma¬ 
jor by the time we had arrived back at the station where 
we asked for a meal; but the cadaverous, blue-jowled waiter 
had not laid covers for fifty in order that intrusive strangers 
might push in and demand food at whatever hour they 
chose. 

“Supper,” he said with some dignity and disgust at our 
ignorance, “is at eight.” 

So out we went on to the pavement platform, found a 
lattice seat and ate the cakes we had bought. They were 
like treacly macaroons, so oily that the paper in which they 
had been wrapped was soaked through, but it was with pure 
almond oil and the cakes were delicious. Lunch had been 
eaten at twelve and in trains one never eats quite at one’s 
ease; hunger had gripped us when eight o ’clock struck by 
the station clock. We took our seats at the long table before 
those piles of plates. A quarter-past eight went by, half¬ 
past eight was approaching. One by one about six or seven 
persons sauntered into the room and seated themselves, 
distant from each other in comparison with the size of the 
table as are the planets in the solar system. Nearest to 
us, our Mars, as it were, was a very fat commercial man, 
his face showing the hue of the ruddy planet. Our Venus 
was represented by a pale young priest, his long wrists 
projecting far from the sleeves of his cassock. Mercury 
looked appropriately enough like one who was always 
travelling; Saturn was covered with rings—he must have 
been one of the customers of the “precio fijo” booths—the 
other planets were lost amongst cumulus of fruit and cirrus 
of palm. 

The waiter became active. Balancing a large soup 
tureen, he ladled a thin, greenish soup into the upper plate. 
We then understood that we would have to eat our way 
down through the pile of plates, each plate a course. Mars 
rushed at his soup in such a wild manner that we felt 


32 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


it was a good thing indeed that the soup-plate was thus 
raised so near to his mouth or fully the half of the soup 
would have drenched his waistcoat. 

Alice again was recalled to my mind. I remembered her 
dismay during her regal banquet when the dishes once intro¬ 
duced to her were whisked away from under her nose, for 
every time I laid down my knife and fork to speak to Jan my 
plate was seized and carried off by the cadaverous waiter. 
No sooner was I introduced to a new Spanish dish than it 
was wrested from me. Twice this had occurred. On the 
third occasion I lay in wait: as the waiter swooped for my 
plate I seized it. There was a momentary struggle, but I 
had two hands to his one; he retired with a look of astonish¬ 
ment on his face. Gradually I became aware of the fact 
that Mars never loosed his knife and fork until he had 
cleared his plate. He held both firmly in his two red 
hands. If he drank—which he did with gusto, throwing 
his head back, washing the wine, which had a queer tarry 
taste, about the inside of his mouth, almost cleaning his 
teeth with it—he held his fork sceptre-wise as if to say 
to the waiter, “Touch that last corner of beefsteak at your 
peril.’’ When he had quite finished the course, when he 
had mopped up all the remnants with a piece of bread, then 
and then only did he lay down both knife and fork. Un¬ 
consciously I had been giving a signal to the waiter. 

After the beefsteak we had a surprise. One has been so 
long accustomed to the French custom in gastronomy, that 
one almost forgets that courses are not arranged in an im¬ 
mutable order. Once indeed I did make a bet in Paris that 
I would eat a meal in the inverse direction, beginning with 
the coffee and sweets and ending with the soup—which, by 
the way, proved very hard to swallow—but the mere fact 
that one could bet about it proves how fixed one imagines 
the laws of food progression to be. At Medina del Campo, 
after the beefsteak, which was about the third item on the 
menu, the waiter brought us fried fish, thereby proving that 
gastronomic progression is not so unalterable as is usually 


MEDINA DEL CAMPO 


33 


imagined. The fish looked like very small plaice, but they 
had a strange flavour which we had never before tasted. 
That the fish had been packed for several days in rotting 
hay seemed the nearest description and explanation, and 
we would have clung to this idea if the salad had not also 
had a perceptible tang of this unpleasant taste. We asked 
the waiter what the flavour was, but our Spanish broke 
down under the strain, and the waiter said “Claro ” 1 and 
went away. 

For some weeks afterwards the word “Claro” became 
our bugbear. The Spaniard gets little amusement from 
hearing his language spoken by foreigners. If the unfor¬ 
tunate foreigner does not get pronunciation, accent and in¬ 
tonation perfect the Spaniard says “Claro,” in reality 
meaning “I can’t make head or tail of what you are talking 
about. ’ ’ Both laziness and courtesy make the Spaniard say 
“Claro,” and often the poor foreigner is quite delighted 
with his progress in the language—the people tell him that 
everything he says is perfectly clear, hooray; he thinks 
that he must have an unsuspected gift for languages—until 
one day he asks the way to somewhere and receives the 
usual answer, “Claro.” 

The Redonda Mesa , 2 which would I think be the Spanish 
for a “square meal,” cost us again four pesetas, and it was 
an even better three and eightpenn’orth than we had been 
given on the train. The meal finished, the planets held a 
public tooth-picking competition for a while, then one by 
one they resumed their normal orbits and passed from our 
sight. 

We, with the processes of digestion heavy upon us, went 
back to the seat in the ill-lit station. Three more hours we 
had to wait for the train to Avila, so we sat in the mild night 
watching the only engine at Medina—an engine which looked 
like an immediate descendant of Stevenson’s Rocket—push 


1 “That is clear.’ 

2 Round table. 



34 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


trucks very slowly to and fro. This engine, though it made 
a lot of spasmodic noise, did not destroy, it only interrupted, 
the intense silence which lay over the country-side. The 
platform was quite deserted. Presently two small boys 
came along. One had a red tin of tobacco which he offered 
to Jan; Jan shook his head but did not answer. They then 
tried to talk to us, but we knew better than to expose our 
imperfect Castilian to two small boys—so we kept silence. 
At last they said we were “misteriosos” and went away. 

A luggage train steamed in. At the tail end of the train 
were three third-class carriages, and from these carriages, 
as well as from the waggons, poured out a mob of wild¬ 
looking men. They were dark brown, unshaven, covered 
with broad tattered straw hats, clothed in rough and 
ragged fustian and carried blankets of many coloured 
stripes. Huge bundles, sacks and strange implements were 
slung upon their backs. As they crowded in beneath the 
dim lamp at the station exit one could almost have sworn 
that all the figures from Millet’s pictures had come to life. 
A smell of the soil and of labour and of sweat went up from 
them. These men were peasants from Galicia; they had 
come in third-class carriages, in good waggons, travelling 
probably for two or three days, attached to luggage trains, 
across the country to the harvesting. One by one they 
passed out, their voices trailed away into the night towards 
Medina, and once more the silence came back. 

Time wears itself out in the end. The train to Avila, 
when it came, was fairly empty, so we could lay ourselves 
out at full length and rest, disturbed, however, by the con¬ 
tinual fear that we might overshoot our destination. 

It was pitchy night when we clambered down from the 
train at Avila. The large barn of a station was lit by but 
three minute lamps and the glow from the fonda door. In 
the semi-darkness the passengers moved about like ghosts, 
each intent on his own business. It was two o ’clock in the 
morning, so before exploring we again put our baggage in a 
corner of the fonda; where also we found the one waiter 


MEDINA DEL CAMPO 


35 


presiding over a banquet laid for fifty non-existent guests. 
Speaking as little of the language as we did, it seemed im¬ 
possible to go exploring a foreign town in the dead of 
night for a hotel which would probably be shut when we 
found it. So, feeling somewhat like Leon Berthelini and 
his wife in Stevenson’s story, we sat down on a seat in the 
station to await the dawn. 

The temperature of the night was almost perfect; there 
was a hint of chill in our faces which, however, did not 
penetrate through the clothing. For awhile porters moved 
about arranging luggage, then one by one the three lights 
were extinguished and the station was left to darkness. 
One porter clambered into a carriage which was standing 
on a siding; as he did not come out again nor pass down on 
the other side we imagine he went to bed in it. We were 
tempted to follow his example, but feared the train might 
move off unexpectedly and carry us to some remote part 
of Spain before we could wake up. One can tempt oppor¬ 
tunity too far. 

But the seat was hard. If, like Berthelini, we had had 
a guitar we might have performed miracles with it similar 
to his, but we had left our guitars in England. So Jan 
went exploring. Outside the station he found a small omni¬ 
bus, its horses eating hay out of nose-bags. Hearing faint 
voices he discovered a sort of dimly lit underground bar 
annexed to the fonda, in which the driver of the omnibus 
and a friend were drinking spirits, while the tired waiter 
lounged yawning behind the counter. Our ignorance of 
Spanish prevented us from thrusting ourselves into their 
company: but we waited for the driver to attend to his 
horses and in halting Hugo we asked him at what hour 
the omnibus went to the hotel. He replied “In the morn¬ 
ing” and went back to his drinking. 

The eau-de-nil of dawn found us on the edge of shivering, 
but the day warmed rapidly. A train thundered into the 
station pouring out its cascade of passengers. Gathering 
up our packages and tipping the waiter fifty centimes, we 


36 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


found a new omnibus which was labelled “Hotel Jardin” 
and took our seats inside. Dawn was over by the time we 
reached the hotel, though it was but four o’clock. We had 
a confused impression of great buff battlements overhang¬ 
ing the buildings, of a few stunted bushes, of one or two 
girls in black, of a huge room which was to be our bed¬ 
room and then—bed—sleep. 


CHAPTER V 


AVILA 

B ORROW has a description of an inn in Galicia in 
which a whole family occupies hut one bedroom while 
the servant sleeps across the door. Our bedroom in 
the Hotel del Jardin was quite large enough for any family 
other than, perhaps, a French Canadian, which sometimes 
runs, we have heard, into twenties and thirties. The walls 
were painted a pinky-mauve stucco, decorated with a broad 
olive-green ribbon of colour making a complete oblong or 
frame on each wall about eighteen inches within the edges 
of the wall, top, bottom and sides. 

This method of making, as it were, a separate frame of 
each wall, was novel and rather pleasant. It is a common 
practice in Spanish wall decoration and is probably Moor¬ 
ish in origin. The hotel was full of dark corridors leading 
to huge bedrooms: it had a broad veranda upstairs full of 
large wicker chairs, bottoms up, while downstairs was a 
dining-room with square tables and a small entrance hall 
in which sat the three old ladies. 

With one of the old ladies we had bargained in a sleepy 
way upon our arrival. She had conceded us the room with 
full pension (no extraordinarios) for eight pesetas a day, 
but in general the three old ladies sat in the entrada to¬ 
gether, giving a sense of black-frocked repose and of quiet 
dignity to the place. One was thin-faced, dried-up but 
energetically capable; one was large and motherly, while 
the third had no characteristics whatever and was ignored 
by every one. 

I do not think we realized that these three old ladies -were 
the proprietresses until the second or third day at lunch- 

37 


38 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


time. We had been given our seats at a table by the 
waiter; suddenly we found the three old ladies bad sur¬ 
rounded us and were glowering down at us. We were ris¬ 
ing to our feet but they peremptorily commanded us to stay 
where we were, breaking the rising tide of their wrath 
upon the waiter. Then, for the first time, we realized bow 
completely we were married in Spain. In France, for in¬ 



stance, married people are “les epoux,” plural, separate; 
in England they are a “married couple,’’ which still recog¬ 
nizes a duality though perhaps less definitely than does 
France; but in Spain we were “un matrimonio, ” indis¬ 
solubly wedded into one in the language, and into a mascu¬ 
line one at that. Somehow I always felt that we ought to 
be wheeled in on casters: it was improper that so stately 
a thing as a matrimonio like the Queen of Spain should use 




AVILA 


39 


legs. From the old ladies’ annoyance we understood that 
the matrimonio had done something which was not correct, 
but they talked so fast, and they all talked together, so 
that the matrimonio could not make head or tail of what 
they were saying. Nor indeed did we ever discover our 
misdemeanour. 

For our six and eightpence a day we had breakfast in a 
little side room. This meal was of cafe au lait in a huge 
bowl, rolls and butter. Sometimes we had companions for 
this meal. On the second day I was some minutes earlier 
than Jan. At the table was a young peasant priest. He 
ignored my tentative bow but began muttering to himself 
protective prayers in Latin. However, once I looked up 
suddenly and surprised him in the act of staring at me. He 
quickly crossed himself and redoubled the urgency of his 
protestations to God. 

The other meals were excellently cooked and with four 
or five courses to each, but the dining-room bore on its 
walls a placard saying that owing to the rise of prices the 
management regretted that it was unable to provide wine 
at the pension. So there was an extraordinario after all— 
and a very good extraordinario it was too—red Rioja wine 
with the faint, strange exotic taste in it of the tar with 
which the wine barrels are caulked. 

You know the queer old drawings one finds in ancient 
books: towns like bandboxes with the walls round a perfect 
circle, and peaked houses all comfortably packed inside, and 
soldiers’ heads sticking out of the battlemented towers? 
Well, Avila is like that. You may stand on the opposite 
hill-side and see the full circle of her walls with never a 
breach in it, with towers at every two hundred yards or so, 
and you can gaze down into her houses, fitted neatly within 
the bandbox, and wonder if the old manuscripts were quite 
as exaggerated as one often supposed. From this hill-side 
one might imagine that Avila has never changed from the 
days when the monks drew their primitive pictures. The 
walls top the hill-side and one sees nothing of the modern 


40 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Avila which has spread beyond those great frowning gate¬ 
ways facing the plaza, but even the modern part of Avila 
which has oozed out beyond the walls is not overwhelmingly 
modern. There are none of the exquisite specimens of 
Spanish bad taste like that we found in Irun. The plaza 
is surrounded by coloured houses and arcades much as is 
that of Medina; the sun-blinds of the two large cafes are 
tattered and weather-beaten; the peasants stare at stran¬ 
gers with an unspoilt curiosity. 

The habit of rushing about towns, of penetrating into 
every gloomy interior, ecclesiastical or otherwise, which 
seems to be decently penetrable, is a modem convention to 
which we do not subscribe. There are two aspects to every 
place, the living and the dead, and we prefer the former. 
There is this advantage in our attitude, that one does not 
have to seek out the living, it flows quite easily and naturally 
by, and one does not remain an open-mouthed spectator with 
a jackdaw brain, but incorporates oneself with it. We 
did not go into the cathedral, nor into any convent, nor did 
we climb up the towers or into the walls: we sat at the cafe 
drinking in both coffee and Spain. 

Of costume, as Spain is so often painted, there was little; 
the peasant men wore tall, flat-brimmed hats and broad, 
blue sashes about their stomachs; the women shawls and 
woven leggings; the mules and donkeys had trappings of 
bright-coloured wool-work and often saddlebags with fine- 
woven coloured patterns on them. String-soled sandals 
were the footwear of the men and of the soldiers: string- 
soled shoes, alpagatas, were worn by the women and chil¬ 
dren. The town was moderately alive until eleven o’clock. 
Very early in the morning the peasants came into the mar¬ 
ket with their mules or donkeys, then gradually a quiet set¬ 
tled down, a quiet which lasted till the evening. After six 
o ’clock Avila awoke, the business men left their shops, the 
officers their cantonments. The cadets and youths gathered 
in the plaza to flirt with the girls who, dressed in gay 
cottons, paraded to and fro in small giggling and swaying 


AVILA 


41 


groups. Booths selling cool drinks and ices opened at the 
corners of the plaza, while wandering sweetmeat merchants 
sold fried almonds and sugared nuts. There was no wo¬ 
man with a lace mantilla and a high comb, nor any one with 
a flat hat, embroidered shawl and cigarette; so the cigar 
boxes are liars. 

As one sits at the cafe table in Spain, life is, perhaps, 
presented to one in an aspect almost too crude. Lazarus 
lay at the rich man’s gates exhibiting his sores, and the 
Spanish beggar follows his example. Spain needs no 
Charles Lamb to write of the decay of beggars. Decayed 
indeed they are, but not in that sense of which Lamb wrote: 
in tattered and unspeakable rags they pursue their trade 
from the Asturias to Cadiz. No dishonour attaches to beg¬ 
gary in Spain. A Spaniard was horrified when Jan told 
him that begging was not permitted in England. 

“What, then, can those do who are unable or unwilling 
to work?” he asked. 

A humble though probably verminous official refuge is 
provided for the beggar in each town, and, as he tells his 
clients, ‘‘ God repays ’ ’ his small extortions. The Spaniard 
is accustomed to his beggars, he does not nag at his con¬ 
science about them, but it harrows the unaccustomed heart 
of the Englishman who, taking his modest coffee or Blanco 
y negro after supper, finds a procession of misery thrusting 
importunate hands into his moment of quiet luxury. The 
Spanish beggar has no tenderness for one’s sensibility. 
Each has the motto, “If you have tears prepare to shed 
them now.” Naturally we were their quarry. They 
presented us with a series of specimens worthy of a hospi¬ 
tal museum. We hardened our hearts, as we were afraid 
of consequences, but after two days, when the beggars, dis¬ 
appointed with us, relaxed their exertions, we gave or with¬ 
held alms with the outward serenity of a Spaniard, but 
feeling inwardly brutal whenever we refused to give a dole. 

Dirty, half-naked children dodged about the cafe pillars, 
hiding from the waiter’s eyes. They stared wistfully at the 


42 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


small, square packets of beet sugar which the waiter' 
brought with the coffee, and if a lump were left over they 
would creep up and in a cringing whine ask for it. Boys 
slightly older usually begged for a perra chica or for a 
cigarette. Their voices would be pathetic enough almost 
to break one’s heart—they would say they had not eaten 
for three days—but if the refusal was decisive they would 
suddenly change their tones and shout out gaily to a com¬ 
rade or run away whistling, or turn a few cartwheels down 
the gutter. 

In Avila, too, we encountered the money problem. We 
had been told that the Spaniard calculates his cash in 
pesetas and centimos, the peseta being worth normally ten- 
pence in English money and the ten-centimo piece about 
one penny. So far this had worked fairly well, we had 
been on the travellers’ route and the peculiarity of travel¬ 
lers had been catered for; but here we found a new system 
of coinage. 

“How much is that?” I asked a woman in the market, 
pointing to some object. 

“That,” she replied, “is worth six ‘little bitches.’ ” 

“Six what?” I exclaimed. 

“Well, three ‘fat dogs,’ if you prefer.” 

“Three ‘fat dogs’?” 

“Yes, or one ‘royal’ and one ‘little bitch.’ ” 

‘ ‘ But I cannot understand. What is a ‘ royal ’ ? ” 

“Oh, don’t you know? Why, twenty ‘royals’ make a 
‘hard one.’ ” 

At last we worried it out. The little bitch (perra chica) 
is five centimos, or one halfpenny. The fat dog (perro 
gordo) is the ten-centimo piece; these are both so called be¬ 
cause of the lion on the back, though why the sex should 
be changed we do not know. The royal (real) is twenty- 
five centimos or twopence-halfpenny, the “hard one” 
(duro) is a five-peseta piece. The peseta is ignored. No¬ 
body except an ignorant foreigner calculates in pesetas. 
The Spaniard, who often cannot write, does staggering 


AVILA 


43 


sums in mental arithmetic, reducing thirty-two “little 
bitches” or seventeen “royals” almost instantly into the 
equivalent in minted coin. 

We had come to Spain for the several reasons mentioned 
in Chapter I. We had found the freedom: it was as though 
some oppressing weight were lifted from off us, as though 
an attack of mental asthma had been relieved. But on the 
whole we felt that we had been defrauded in other respects. 
The weather, except for the afternoon at Medina, had been 
very cloudy and at times almost cold. We had heard no 
guitar during our week in Spain. One day a man with a 
primitive clarinet, accompanied by a man with a side drum, 
had wandered about the town making a queer music which 
had given us thrills of unexpected delight. But Jan does 
not play the clarinet. He had made up his mind about 
guitars, and guitars he would have. The last night which 
we were to spend in Avila, he said: 

“See here, Jo, we’ll go out and we’ll walk up and down, 
through and round this town, till we hear a guitar playing. 
Then we will walk in and explain. I’m sure the people, 
whoever they may be, will not mind, but I am going to 
hear Spanish music.” 

After supper we set out again. We walked the town 
from the top to the bottom. Not a whisper of guitar or of 
any other music. We bisected the town from left to right 
—still silence except for the dim sounds of normal evening 
life. We went out into the little garden which was beyond 
the walls and, leaning on the parapet, stretched our ears 
over the small suburb beneath. The cries of a wailing 
child or two, of a scolding woman and the shouts of an 
angry man answered us; of music not a note. We walked 
round the walls and were about to return in disappointment 
to the hotel, when Jan said “Hush!” 

We listened. Barely audible, from below on the hill-side, 
came the faint tinkle of a guitar. We looked out across the 
dark country. The hill sloped steeply from our feet and 
rose again in planes of blue blackness to the distant moun- 


44 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


tains. Almost in the bottom of the valley we saw a square 
of light from an open door. The sound came from this 
direction. Cautiously we crept down the hill, which was 
steep, pebbly and without paths. As we came down, the 
noise grew louder. 

There was a small drinking house or venta by the road¬ 
side; near to it, drawn up on a grassy spot beneath some 
big trees, were gipsy caravans and booths, and as we passed 
by we could see, dimly white, the blanketed shapes of the 
gipsies as they lay on the grass asleep under the stars. 
From the venta came the sounds of music. 

After a momentary hesitation we went in. The room, 
lit by one dim lamp, was crowded with gipsies and workmen. 
It was long in shape and an alcove almost opposite to the 
door was partitioned off as a bar. At one end was a table 
upon which three gipsies with dark, lined Spanish faces 
were sitting, and the audience had formed itself into rough, 
concentric semicircles spreading down the length of the 
room. Most of the men were swarthy with the sun, clad 
in the roughest of clothes, some with tall hats on, others 
with striped blankets flung over their shoulders. The inn 
looked like what the average traveller would describe as a 
nest of brigands. 

We murmured a bashful “buenos noches,” bowed to the 
company and crept into the background. A few returned 
our greeting, but with delicacy of feeling the majority took 
no overt notice of our presence. 

The man on the table who held the guitar began to thrum 
on the instrument. A tall gipsy, whose face was drawn 
into clear, almost prismatic shapes, and who might have 
stepped out of an etching by Goya, put his stick into a 
corner, slipped off his blanket and, standing in the open 
space before the table, began a stamping dance, snapping 
his fingers in time with the rhythm. A workman standing 
near to us said: 

“That man does not play the guitar very well, the other 
one plays better.” 


AVILA 


45 


He went out and in a short while returned with his wife, 
a laughing woman whom he placed next to me. There was 
no drinking of wine. The alcarraza, an unglazed, bottle¬ 
shaped drinking vessel, full of water, was handed about. 
It has a small spout, and from this the Spaniard pours a 
fine stream of water into his mouth. But beware, incau¬ 
tious traveller—ten to one you will drench yourself. 

Though the audience apparently took no notice of our 
presence, in reality they were extremely conscious of us. 
One by one, as if by accident, gipsy women clad in red 
cottons came into the already crowded room. Soon a girl 
was urged to dance. She demurred, giggling. At last she 
was pushed into the open space, and with a gesture of 
resignation she began to dance. We are not judges of 
Spanish dancing: we had been looking for atmosphere, and 
had plunged into the thick of it. This was no cafe in Ma¬ 
drid or Seville got up for the entertainment of the traveller. 
This was the true, natural, romantic Spain. Opportunity 
again had blessed her disciples. One of the women pushed 
her way out of the door, and in a short while returned, 
dragging with her a child about nine years old. The little 
girl’s face was frowning and angered, the sleep from 
which she had been roused still hung heavy on her eyelids. 

“Aha!” exclaimed the audience. “She dances well.” 

The man who was reputed the better player roused him¬ 
self from the table and sat down on a chair. They put 
castanets into the child’s hands. The man struck a few 
chords and slowly the music formed itself into the rhythm 
of a Spanish measure. 

Relaxing none of her angry, sleepy expression, the child 
danced wonderfully. The castanets clashed and fluttered 
beneath her fingers, her skirts swirled this way and that, 
her feet beat the floor in time with the pulsation of the 
guitar. The audience shouted encouragement at her. 
With a wild series of movements, the dance at last came 
to an end. 

‘ ‘ Brava! Brava! ’ ’ cried the gipsies. 


46 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


“One day that girl will be worth much money,” said a 
man, with approval in his voice. 

Then the best male dancer took the floor. With true 
artistic instinct he did not attempt to rival the active danc¬ 
ing of the child, but performed a stately movement, holding 
his arms above his head, and slowly turning himself about. 
When he sat down an old man of seventy or so began a 



series of senile caperings, thumping his stick on the floor. 
The audience rolled with laughter at the ancient buffoon. 

For some while Jan had been wondering whether he 
should pay for two or three bottles of wine for the com¬ 
pany, but we did not know the delicacies of Spanish eti¬ 
quette, nor had we sufficient language in which to make 
an inquiry, so, pushing my way to the child who had 




AVILA 47 

danced so well, I pressed a few coppers into her hand. 
She looked up at me in astonishment. 

“What do you want me to do, then?” she asked. 

Our Spanish failed to shape a proper reply, so I smiled at 
her as answer. 

“Buenos noches,” and “Muchos gracias,” we said to 
the crowd, and made our way out again into the night. 

We were followed up the hill by a gipsy boy who begged 
cigarettes, but he had pestered us during the whole of our 
stay at Avila, and we did not feel kindly towards him. Nor 
indeed had we any cigarettes to give, because Spain was 
suffering from a tobacco famine, and those which we had 
brought with us from France had just come to an end. 

The next morning we left the Hotel del Jardin, which 
owes its name to the fact that it possesses in the front a 
tiny square of earth on which grow five bushes and a small 
tree. We were bound for Madrid. 


CHAPTER VI 


MADRID 

M ADRID Station was the usual dark barn into which 
the trains ran and where they rested, as the dil¬ 
igences rest beneath the barn of the coaching inn. 
One descended the steps of the carriage into gloom; found 
a dim porter whom one would never recognize again; made 
one’s way amongst the towering, sniffling black Pargantua 
of locomotives; was fought for by an excited mob of cab¬ 
men, amongst whom one remained passive until a cabman 
dowered with more character than his fellows had managed 
to attract one’s notice; and finally we were packed into a 
small, four-square omnibus, our luggage on the top, the 
driver and his tout on the box. A police official in a grey 
uniform halted us. He asked our names, our destination 
and warned us not to pay the driver more than five pesetas 
for the trip, including the luggage. 

To-day was Sunday. We had, indeed, on getting up at 
Avila imagined it to be Saturday. We were leaving Avila 
expressly on a Saturday in order to be in Madrid for the 
great Sunday bullfight, for practically all bullfighting in 
Spain is reserved as a mild sport for Sunday afternoon, or 
for other days of Church festival. Unfortunately, we had 
learned on the train that it was not Saturday but Sunday. 
Somehow, we had mislaid a day. We had presented our¬ 
selves with a Wednesday or a Thursday or a Friday too 
many, and now Sunday had gone bang and the bullfight 
with it. 

But in consequence our entry into Madrid had some of 
the dignity of a royal procession. We plunged, a shabby 
omnibus, into the flood of carriages which parade the parks 

48 


MADRID 


49 


of Madrid on bullfight occasions. There were doubtless 
ladies with high combs placed in their raven hair; with 
lustrous eyes glowing from the deep caverns of their eye- 
sockets; with a waxy and sensuous flower hanging from 
their full-blooded lips; clad in mystery-lending mantilla and 
gorgeous shawl, over which the Orient has burst a splen¬ 
dour of silken blossom. There were, no doubt, such spec¬ 
tacles to see; there must have been; all the artists who paint 
Spain cannot lie. Yet I confess that we did not see them. 
Though we are beginning to be suspicious of Spanish 
painters, we will not assert that no such ladies drove in 
procession, tempting the lounging Spaniard with glances 
from eyes of melting jet. 

We did not see them because the whole flood of car¬ 
riages was plunged in a strange golden haze. Dusk had 
fallen and overhead signs of daylight showed purplish 
through the fog, but lower down it was quite dark, and 
through this haze of orange-gold particles, which drifted in 
the air as golden particles drift in a chemical solution, the 
lamps of the carriages threw long searchlights, arresting 
strange silhouettes of the coach-borne crowd, so that we 
made our first acquaintance with the people of Madrid 
merely as black shadows against a radiance of gold. It 
was, indeed, somewhat a prophetic introduction. These 
black shadows against the gold may stand as a figure for 
Spain. We think of Spain as the land of the last romance, 
whereas the Spaniard’s real romance is money and the 
gaining of it. But this is a mixing of secondary and pri¬ 
mary impressions. Before our eyes Madrid rolled for¬ 
ward, gloating in an aureate solution, accompanied by the 
shouts of coachmen and the blaring from aristocratic and 
impatient motor-cars. We sat looking out of the black 
windows of the omnibus with much of that childish delight 
which a shadowgraph theatre gives. In time, however, we 
began to cough. After a while longer we began to realize 
that this haze so exquisite in the lamplight was dust—dust. 

We rolled along, manufacturing our halo as we went, 


50 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


until, coming out of the press of carriages into cobbled and 
ill-lit streets, our glory fell away from us and we rocked on, 
reflecting on this apt illustration of the old French proverb 
concerning beauty and suffering. Gradually we decided 
that we could have dispensed with this weird introduction 
to Madrid in order to have spared our throats. 

Our friend Jesus Perez bad given us an address appro¬ 
priately enough in the Place of the Angel. But there were 
three pensions in the same building and he had not dis¬ 
criminated. So I, leaving Jan to look after the bus, went to 
explore, and knocking at random was brought face to face 
with an old lady who had not a trace of the angelic in her 
constitution. While she was grumpily and wilfully mis¬ 
understanding me, insisting that the Senor for whom I was 
looking did not live there, a crowd of well-fed persons sifted 
from the dining-room and stood in a circle staring at me 
with cold-eyed curiosity. As they stared they all picked 
their teeth. At last I forced understanding on her and she 
told me in a surly voice that her pension was full. The 
other two pensions were full also. It was explained to me 
that Madrid was suffering from congestion, that never had 
such a season been experienced. 

So I retreated from the stairs and we held a council of 
distress in the street. The driver of the bus, who did not 
indeed look like a very competent judge, said that he knew 
of a good pension. By a series of manoeuvres, about as 
complicated as the turning of a large ship in a small river, 
he got his bus reversed and we set off again the way we 
had come. But once more we met a refusal, backed by 
wide-eyed staring and public tooth-picking. 

We had the address of an hotel, as a last resource indeed, 
for it was somewhat beyond our means, costing seventeen 
pesetas a day en pension. So in despair we made our way 
to it, wondering whether the congestion had spread from 
the eight-peseta boarding-houses to the seventeen-peseta 
hotels, and whether our first night in Madrid was to be 
spent in the bus. We came back into the garishly lit main 


MADRID 


51 


streets of Madrid and at last the bus halted. There was 
no hotel front, and we plunged between two shops along a 
passage from which photographs of the beauties of Madrid 
showed exquisite sets of teeth from the showcases of a 
society photographer. A narrow, twisting staircase—the 
lift was out of order—spiralled us up to a sumptuous hotel 
decorated with mirrors and white paint arranged with a 
Permanic taste. Rooms were to be had, and so we resigned 
ourselves to luxury for a few days. 

Luxury indeed it was. For our eight pesetas a day in 
Avila we had had as much as we wanted. Here it was in 
proportion. We were expected to eat our seventeen pes¬ 
etas’ worth a day. Course followed course until, more than 
replete, we had to wave away almost the whole of the 
second half of this truly Roman repast. The waiters were 
aghast. What? Not eat seventeen pesetas’ worth when 
one had paid for it? Incredible! We gazed about at our 
fellow diners and saw that we were unique. But then as a 
rule our fellow diners surpassed us as much in girth as in 
appetite; they had “excellent accommodations.” Your 
true Spaniard adores his dinner. There is a general super¬ 
stition that love is the Spaniard’s prime passion. But I 
doubt it. For the once that we have been asked what we 
think of Spanish beauty, we have been twenty times ques¬ 
tioned about our judgment of Spanish cooking. 

Madrid at night! How much has one not dreamed of 
southern romance beneath skies of ultramarine? But 
Madrid seems just like any other large European city. It 
is Paris without the wit, Munich without the music. We 
talk, of course, of first impressions. The first impressions 
of a town are rarely national. Collective humanity is col¬ 
lective humanity everywhere; has the same needs and 
devises the same methods of satisfying them. Some needs 
Madrid supplies more blatantly than is done in other places. 
The Latin is indifferent to noise and the Spaniard is the 
most hardened of the Latin races. There seems to be no 
curb on the cries of the street vendors. The consequence 


52 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


is that each shouts out his wares in competition with his 
fellows; the louder the yell the more the custom. The 
peculiar qualities of Spanish singing further stimulate to 
a point of mordant acidity the Iberian voice. For a person 
of sensitive hearing Madrid is intolerable: newspaper men, 
flower-merchants, toothpick-sellers, and above all the lot¬ 
tery ticket vendors, scream their wares with nerve-racking 
persistency; added to which, to make pandemonium com¬ 
plete, the cab-drivers and their touts bellow and shout, 
while the horns of the motor-cars are the most discordant 
that we have ever heard. 

As the night progressed from a stifling heat to a com¬ 
parative coolness the noise seemed to increase. At two 
o’clock in the morning we thought, surely, it had reached 
its limit. And to some extent it had. One thanks Heaven 
sometimes that the human machine runs down; and we, 
when the “sweet sister of death” laid her hands upon 
newspaper and lottery ticket sellers, sent a thanksgiving 
up towards the stars, a thanksgiving the more sincere at 
the moment because it was silent. The diminution of noise 
went on steadily until about three, and we imagined that 
Madrid was going to sleep. It was, however, but a ruse 
of the subtle city. As is well known, one can become used 
to a persistent or regularly repeated noise, for Jan used 
to sleep sweetly close to the stamp battery of a mine, the 
din of which was so deafening that the voice was inaudible, 
even at the loudest shout; and dwellers near a railway line 
are but little disturbed by the nightly trains. Madrid knew 
that in time we would become accustomed to the human 
babel, in spite of its strident note; so she substituted a 
fictitious silence torn into strips by the sudden passage of 
motors which had taken advantage of the clearness of the 
streets to put on full speed and also to cut off the silencer. 
Irregularly these motors went by about one every five min¬ 
utes. Each silence was about long enough to let us reach 
the edge over which one tumbles into sleep, and each roar- 


MADRID 


53 


ing passage of a car jerked us back into disgusted wake¬ 
fulness. We arose to a very early breakfast, wishing we 
had Mr. G. K. Chesterton at hand so that we could enter 
into an argument with him about the beauties of liberty. 

To retrace our steps for a moment, it was just about at 
the hither side of the noise climax, that is, about 2.20 in 
the morning, that we got back to our hotel. We found the 
street door shut and locked, and no bell could we find to 
pull. We thumped on the door, but only a hollow, drum¬ 
like echoing answered us. We were dismayed. We had 
got up early at Avila, a train journey and discoverings in 
Madrid had worn us out, and on the other side of this locked 
door our bed tempted us; for we were not then aware that 
sleep was forbidden to us whether we got in or stayed in 
the street. It seemed strange in Madrid, wide awake and 
noisy, that our hotel should have locked up so early and 
should have shut us out. Despairingly again we drummed 
on the door. We awakened sympathy in a passer-by. A 
few words explained our plight. He whistled, and we pres¬ 
ently saw a man with a lantern in his hand and with an 
official cap on his head coming towards us. Our helper 
explained and the official unlocked the door, let us in, and 
locked the door behind us. 

This wandering latchkey is the equivalent to our old 
night-watchman. Amongst his duties is that of chanting 
out the hours of the night as they pass—for the benefit 
of the sleepless—to which he adds the condition of the 
weather. Since fully ninety-five per cent, of the Spanish 
nocturnes are Whistlerian blue, he has earned the title of 
El Sereno, or the serene. There is an advantage in this 
custom—one cannot forget one’s latchkey. The worst evil 
which can happen to one is that one’s latchkey may forget 
itself: but Spain is on the whole a sober country. 

A big town reveals its flavour but by degrees. Madrid, 
whatever its real character may be, had hidden herself 
behind a veil—a veil of dust. That golden aura which had 


54 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


enveloped our first vision was not a permanent character¬ 
istic of the town. The dust hung in the air, rising higher 
than the houses. From the outskirts, maybe one would 
have seen Madrid as it were enclosed in a dome of dust. 
We marvelled that people could live in such an atmosphere. 

We had noticed that, in addition to its dustiness, Madrid 
was suffering from a dreadful shortage of water. It was, 
of course, July, and one might expect some famine on the 
high and arid tableland of Spain, but we wondered that so 
great a city could have arisen with so meagre a water 
supply. At street corners queues of tired women and chil¬ 
dren waited for hot hours with buckets, pails, jugs and 
amphoras. Soldiers with a hose pipe from which trickled 
a paltry stream of water filled the vessels one by one. 
There was gaiety and bad temper, giggling and quarrelling 
amongst the women. 

“This,” said we, “is a primitive city.” 

In the public gardens water-carts were standing, and 
crowds of men were baling water up from the decorative 
ponds. 

“A real famine,” said we, “could not be worse than 
this. ’ ’ 

This was in fact the case. Madrid is supplied from the 
mountains by an ancient aqueduct. The Spaniard has a 
principle of interfering with nothing until the last moment; 
the ideals of liberty are carried so far in Spain thaf they 
apply to inanimate objects as well as human beings. Thus, 
if the aqueduct wishes to break, it is allowed to do so. 
Panic ensues. The government is criticized, but words 
hurt nobody. The aqueduct had given way a few days 
before our arrival. Had it not been for the generosity of 
a nobleman who turned a private water supply into the 
conduits of Madrid, we would have found not calamity but 
catastrophe. 

Madrid was unsavoury enough. The breakdown of the 
water-supply entails also the failure of the drainage sys- 


MADRID 


55 


tem. In a land of wine one might dispense with water as 
a mere drink; but to dispense with flushed drains in a semi- 
tropical climate is impossible. 

One late afternoon we were in our bedroom, having 
taken advantage of the quiet which reigns from one p.m. 
till five (for we got no other sleep during our stay)—we 
heard a faint strange murmur which seemed to be draw- 


. .77 

. i ' *■ i — -— 

. 



ing nearer. We w T ent to the balcony and looked out. The 
sound was coming from the direction of the Puerto del 
Sol, the sun’s gate, the torrid centre of Madrid so well 
named. The sound drew nearer. Soon it shaped itself 
into a word murmur from thousands of throats: 

“Agua, agua, agua.” 

The word passed us and fled down the streets, sweeping 
before the hesitating trickle which crept along the gut- 





56 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


ters. With the word a communal shiver of delight ran 
through the town, like a sort of physical earthquake. Be¬ 
fore six o’clock the road men were dragging their hoses 
about the street, and the rising damp was dragging the 
dust out of the air. 


CHAPTER VII 


A HOT NIGHT 

(This Chapter should he omitted by Prudes) 

T HE expense of an omnibus is not necessary to the 
experienced traveller. A Spanish friend took us to 
a bureau of town porters in Madrid, and we gave 
instructions to a dark-faced man in a shabby uniform, who 
promised to see all our baggage to the station in good 
time for the evening train to Murcia. Senor Don Mateo 
Bartolommeo was the name of the porter, for he gave 
us his visiting card, on which was his professional and 
private address, and a deep black mourning border like 
that on one’s grandmother’s envelopes. 

The preliminaries to travelling in Spain are lengthy. 
The ticket office opens fifteen or twenty minutes before the 
train leaves, but the passengers arrive an hour before, so 
that there is always a long queue waiting at the ticket 
office. One can buy either tickets for the journey or 
tickets for the thousand or more kilometres. The latter 
are a great saving if one does much travelling, but they 
entail further delay at the booking office, for verifying, 
tearing off, stamping, and so forth. Then with one’s 
tickets one goes to the luggage bureau, where the van 
luggage is weighed, overweight charged, and a long slip 
receipt given. The luggage is then presumed to travel 
to the journey’s end and should be forthcoming on the 
production by the passenger of the receipt. This is not 
invariably the case; but of that we will tell in its place. 
The wealthy traveller does not undergo all this fatigue. 
He shows a porter the luggage for the van, tells him the 

57 


58 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


station to which he wishes to travel, gives him the money 
to pay for ticket and luggage, and bothers his head no more 
about it. The Spanish porter is unusually honest. You 
can give him two or three hundred pesetas to buy tickets 
with, and a few minutes before the train starts up he runs 
with the tickets, the luggage receipt, and the exact change. 

We, however, wanted to experience everything; we did 
not wish to spend our small capital on exorbitant tips, so I, 
leaving Jan to see to the tickets and heavy luggage, argued 
my way past the ticket collector, who is supposed to let 
nobody on to the platform without a ticket, found an empty 
carriage, appropriated seats, and sat on the step waiting 
for the porter to bring up the smaller luggage. An old 
lady in black, with a huge bandbox and a birdcage, accom¬ 
panied by three hatless girls dressed in purple silk, all 
carrying at least four parcels apiece, filled up my com¬ 
partment, and I thought: “We are going to have a stuffy 
time of it.” 

The train was full of talk. In the corridors the people 
chattered at the top of their voices like a rookery. Pres¬ 
ently, conversing in shrill tones, the old lady and her three 
daughters swooped back into the carriage, and with much 
rustling of silk dragged all their parcels to some other part 
of the train. A young officer, carrying about six packages, 
took one of the vacated places, and marked his seat by 
unbuckling his sword, which he placed in the corner. An 
old man, rather run to stomach, took the seat opposite 
the soldier. He then stood in the doorway, w r edging his 
stomach into the opening, so that nobody else should enter. 
The time drew closer to the departure of the train. 

The noise increased a hundredfold. Three girls rushed 
along the corridor and unceremoniously butted the old gen¬ 
tleman in the waistcoat. The corridor was filled with a 
confused crowd of people, who handed in large hat-boxes, 
brightly striped, square cardboard boxes, small suit-cases 
with gilt locks, and a huge doll. The carriage was filled 
with a strong smell of scent. There was giggling and the 


A HOT NIGHT 


59 


kissing of adieux. The escort then retreated down the 
corridor and the three girls set to arranging themselves 
for the journey. One of the girls was very dark, her face 
like old ivory, her eyes large caverns of gloom, and her 
mouth painted a brilliant scarlet; one was fair with a long 
face and grey eyes, very excitable in manner, talking a hig£ 
pitched Spanish with a queer intonation; the third was big¬ 
ger than either of her companions, yet less remarkable. 
One could easily have imagined her dressed in cowgirl’s 



costume, performing in a travelling Buffalo Bill show. 
All three had bobbed hair, though that of the second girl 
was an elaborate coiffure of short hair rather than a mere 
bob. 

The dark girl picked up the soldier’s sword and tossed 
it into the luggage rack. The cowgirl pushed the stout 
old man’s suit-case out of his corner and took his seat. 
The old man but grinned and guffawed, seeming pleased 
rather than angry. The soldier stood in the corridor and 



60 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


glowered at the dark girl through the glass. He offered 
no objection to the robbery of his seat, but it was evident 
what were his thoughts. The second girl flung herself 
down on the seat next to Jan, blew out a long sigh and 
exclaimed: “Aie, que calor, que calor.” 

It was indeed hot. All day long the sun had been beat¬ 
ing down into Madrid. The Puerto del Sol had been more 
like the “Puerto del Infierno.” The little trickles of water 
which the repaired aqueduct had afforded to Madrid had 
done little to mitigate the dull reverberant heat of the still 
air. Even now that the night had come the air was yet 
quivering, and came into the lungs like half-warmed water. 

The girls got down their dainty suit-cases from the rack, 
opened them, burrowing amongst tawdry finery, manicure 
sets, powder-boxes and other articles of toilet use, found 
boxes of cigarettes. To do this, the cowgirl placed her 
suit-case on the seat and, standing, bent over it. The stout 
old man, with a giggle, leant forward and gave the girl a 
resounding smack with his open palm upon that part of 
her which was nearest to him. The officer, through the 
glass, frowned and pursed up his lips. The girl next to 
Jan caught my eye, smiled at me, and winked. 

“Aie, que calor!” she exclaimed, blowing cigarette smoke 
into the air. 

The train dragged itself out of the station and started 
southward through the night. 

The girl who was sitting next to Jan broke out into un¬ 
expected French. 

“Mon Dieu! Qu’il fait chaud!” she exclaimed, as though 
Spanish would not properly express the quality of the heat. 

“But,” said Jan to her, “you speak French very well.” 

“Well,” she retorted, “I ought to, seeing that I am 
French.” 

Suddenly she came to a resolution. She stood up and 
again took down her suit-case. She took from it a wrap¬ 
per of tinted muslin. Slowly then she began to take off 
her clothes. Her silk dress she folded up very neatly 


A HOT NIGHT 


61 


and laid along the little rack which is set just below the 
ordinary one. Then she slipped off her petticoat and cami¬ 
sole, and put on the muslin wrapper. 

“That is better,’’ she exclaimed; folded up her discarded 
underwear, put it into the suit-case, which she then replaced 
on the rack. 

She then began on her coiffure. She detached a series 
of little curls from over her ears, and twisting the wires 
on which they were made into hooks, she suspended them 
from the netting of the rack, where over her head they 
swung to and fro with the movement of the train. 

“Maintenant,” she said, “on est plus a son aise. Be¬ 
sides,” she added, with the instinct of true French econ¬ 
omy, “it does so spoil one’s clothes if one takes a long 
railway journey in them.” 

The act had been performed with naturalness, and in 
view of the heat of the night we could not help envying 
the French girl for her good sense in making the long 
journey as comfortable as possible. 

She began to tell Jan the story of her life. “Mother 
was a nuisance,” she said; “she made life a little bit of 
hell at home. Well, one day we had a fine old flare-up. I 
told mother that she could go to the devil if she liked, and 
I just packed up and ran away. I came down to Madrid, 
and on the whole I haven’t done so badly. I send mother 
about eight hundred pesetas a month. Most of that she’ll 
keep for me, and I’ll have a nice little sum to start busi¬ 
ness with when I get back. Of course one can’t keep up 
a quarrel with one’s mother for ever. Hein!” 

Jan asked her how long she had been in Spain. 

“Four months,” she answered. 

“You speak very good Spanish,” said Jan. 

“Oh,” she answered, with a touch of desperation in her 
voice, “one can’t be all day doing nothing. It’s a distrac¬ 
tion learning something new.” 

“Where are you going now?” asked Jan. 

“We are all going to Cartagena,” said the French girl. 


62 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


“We’ll be down there all the summer. There are English 
there too, I have heard—sailors. I like sailors. You see, 
I had to get away from Madrid. I had a friend, and one 
day while I was out he stole all my spare money, and all 
my clothes, which he took to the pawnshop. And that left 
me stranded. Then I heard these two girls were going to 
Cartagena, to a place, so I said, ‘I’ll come too,’ and here 
I am. Anyway one has to be somewhere, and I adore 
knocking about. It’s life, isn’t it?” 

The dark girl was merely a selfish, pretty animal. She 
curled up on the officer’s seat like a black cat. She then 
slyly prodded the poor little stout man with her high heels, 
so that he gradually moved up towards me, leaving me 
little room in which to sit, while the dark girl could stretch 
out at her ease. The other girl sat in her corner, saying 
little, smoking cigarette after cigarette. She seemed to be 
one of those stolid creatures who drop through life, tak¬ 
ing good and bad without change of face or of manner. 
She might have been rather South German than Spanish. 
In contrast with these two the French girl was simple and 
attractive. One noted, too, that she had a fine streak of 
unselfishness in her character; she even talked without bit¬ 
terness of the man who had robbed her. 

Young men drifted along the corridors and stared in at 
the girls. One man, who looked well off, dressed in a tweed 
sporting coat, came in and made friends. He gave them 
cigarettes and drinks of brandy from a flask. At about 
one o ’clock in the morning, one of the cardboard boxes was 
opened and disclosed a large pie, which was divided. The 
stout old gentleman had a piece, so did “Tweeds.” Some 
was offered to us, but we had dined well at Madrid and did 
not feel hungry. But to refuse in Spain is a delicate 
matter, so we gave them cigarettes to indicate goodwill. 

We stopped at a dark station. The door was flung open 
and a tall sunburned man clambered into the carriage. He 
had around his waist a broad leather belt which was stuck 
full of knives. These implements were clasp knives, and 


A HOT NIGHT 


63 


varied from small pocket knives and pruning knives to 
veritable weapons a foot in length. He was not a famous 
brigand, though he looked one, but a salesman. The larger 
knives had a circular ratchet and a strong spring at the 
back, so that upon opening they made a blood-curdling 
noise, which in itself would be enough to induce any angry 
man to finish the matter by burying the blade in his enemy’s 
gizzard. He did no business in our carriage, and went oft 
down the platform opening and shutting a sample of his 
murderous wares, crying out: “Navajos! Navajos!” 

The train went on, and as we reached southward the 
night became warmer. The stout old man left us, and the 
black girl stretched out at full length, occasionally prod¬ 
ding me with her French heels. Presently the darkness 
became less opaque. A faint silhouette of low hills, and 
then a dim reflection from flat lands, appeared. 

We stopped at another station; an unimportant way- 
side station with a small house for booking-office and a 
drinking-booth in a lean-to alongside. 

“I must have a drink,” exclaimed ‘‘Tweeds.” “Who 
will come with me?” 

Neither the black girl nor the cowgirl would move. We 
had still lemonade in our Thermos flasks. So the French 
girl, in her muslin peignoir, and “Tweeds” clambered down 
the carriage steps and disappeared through the door of 
the fonda. 

Disappeared is the right word. Without warning, the 
train began to move. It gathered speed and clattered 
away southward. We never saw “Tweeds” or the French 
girl again. In the thinnest of negliges she was left stranded 
upon the wayside station, to which no other train would 
come for at least twelve hours, and possibly not for twenty- 
four. 

The day broke, and we pounded along through a dusty 
arid country. There was green in the bottom of the valley, 
but from the roads rose high columns of dust, while the 
plastered villages of boxlike houses near the railroad were 


64 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


dried up and dust-coated. Dust blew in through the car¬ 
riage windows and settled thick upon the curls which, still 
swinging and bobbing from the netting of the rack, were 
fast leaving their mistress behind. At first her companions 
had been anxious; now they were laughing. 

“But,” they said, “we wonder if she knows where to 
come for her things when she does arrive?” 

The train became more crowded. Soon people were 
running up and down, looking angrily for places. Third- 
class passengers began to fill the corridor of our second- 



class carriage. A boy of about nineteen, with the half- 
angry intense face characteristic of some Latins, came into 
the carriage and demanded a seat from the dark girl who 
was still stretched at full length. This seat “Darkey,” 
with her habitual selfishness, refused to give up. Sud¬ 
denly, we were in the middle of a full-fledged Spanish row. 

To us it had a comic side. It was not what we would 
have called a row, as much as a furious debate. Of course 
with our slight acquaintance with Spanish we missed the 
finer points of the varied arguments. 







A HOT NIGHT 


65 


“Darkey” began by saying that sbe was keeping the 
seat for a friend who was somewhere else. This was to 
some extent true; the French girl was somewhere else, 
though there was little likelihood of her claiming the seat. 

The boy retorted that if she was somewhere else she 
probably had another seat. 

This argument went to and fro, increasing in acerbity. 
Each of the quarrellers listened in silence to what the other 
had to say, making no attempt to interrupt, though the 
voices grew hoarse with anger. 

Presently “Darkey” was telling the boy that he was a 
wretched third-class passenger anyhow, and that he had 
no right in a second-class carriage, and even if the seat 
were free he wasn’t going to have it. 

The boy retorted by saying that anybody could see what 
she was, and that her mother was probably sorry that she 
had ever been born, etc., etc. 

No English quarrel could have gone to half the length 
that this proceeded. We were waiting to see either the 
boy jump into the carriage and shake the life out of 
“Darkey,” or to see “Darkey” spring, like the young 
tiger-cat she was, at the boy and scratch his face. But 
nothing happened. The crowded corridor listened with 
delight to the progress of the quarrel. 

The train stopped at a station. “Darkey” had sat up 
to pulverize the impertinent youth with some evil retort. 
The carriage door on the opposite side opened, and a placid, 
middle-aged peasant woman, followed by an ancient peas¬ 
ant man, stepped into the carriage, and before “Darkey” 
had well discovered what was happening had squashed 
down in the disputed seat, left vacant by the removal of 
“Darkey’s” feet. The woman grinned at us all and sat 
nursing a large basket on her lap. 

Then the quarrel slowly died down. After a while the 
boy went away. However, he came back again whenever 
he had thought of something good, and barked it round the 
corner of the door at “Darkey,” who, usually taken by 


66 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


surprise, could find nothing to retort before he had lost 
himself again in the crowd. 

The peasant woman smiled at us all, and, opening her 
basket, handed to each of us a large peach. She selected 
one especially big for “Darkey,’’ presumably as refresh¬ 
ment after the tiring argument. 

The day became hotter and hotter. The dust gathered 
more thickly on to the French girl’s poor little curls. When 
the train stopped, children ran up and down beside the 
carriages, selling water at the price of “one little bitch’’ 
the glass. We were now in the province of Murcia, and 
the scenery put on the characteristic appearance of that 
province, tall bare hills of an ochreous mauve, sloping 
down into a flat, irrigated, fertile valley. The division 
between mountain and valley, between the “desert and the 
strown” was as sharp as though drawn with the full brush 
of a Japanese. On the mountains were dead remnants of 
Saracen castles, of dismantled Spanish robber fortresses, 
and the white or coloured buildings of monasteries which 
still lived sparkling in the sun. 


CHAPTER VIII 


MURCIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS 

O NE has a right to expect that the station which is the 
finish of a long and tiring journey should be both a 
terminus and have a quality all of its own. Our 
egoism makes it seem at that moment the most important 
place in the world. But Murcia (pronounced locally 
Mouthia) had only a big ugly barn of a station like many 
through which we had already passed, and even lacked a 
Precio Fijo jewellery shop. All we could see of the town, 
on emerging, was a few houses and a line of small trees 
which appeared as though they had been in a blizzard of 
whole-meal flour, so thick was the dust. Over this buff 
landscape quivered the blue sky. 

In front of us were one or two cranky omnibuses and 
many green-hooded two-wheeled carts. These carts were 
Oriental in appearance and had the most distinctive 
appearance we had yet noted in Spain. They were gaily 
painted, and the hoods bulged with the generous curves 
of a Russian cupola. Inside they were lined with soiled 
red velvet, and the driver sat outside of this magnificence 
on a seat hanging over one of the tall wheels. Into one of 
these we were squeezed in company with two grinning 
travellers, and started off, soon plunging into the shadow 
of an avenue of lime trees, behind the grey trunks of which 
cowered insignificant little houses painted in colours which 
once had been bright. 

The more communicative of our fellow travellers said it 
was indeed the hottest day of the year. It was hot, but 
we were not oppressed by it, and found out in time that 
the Spaniard always seemed to suffer from the heat more 

67 


68 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


than we did. Our endeavours to be agreeable in imper¬ 
fect Spanish worked up the traveller to a discussion on 
languages, and to a eulogy on ourselves for taking the 
trouble to learn. We said that we were artists. He 
answered: 

“Ah, yes, that explains it. Poor people, of course, are 
forced to learn languages.” 

We drove across a stone bridge, almost in collision with 
a bright blue tram-car. A momentary glimpse was given 
to us of a muddy river running between deep embank¬ 
ments; and we drew up before a square barrack of red 
brick pierced by a regiment of balconied windows. The 
proprietor, oily like a cheerful slug, waved his fingers close 
to us, and drew back his hand in delicate jerks as though 
we were rare and brittle china. He preceded us into an 
Alhambra-like central hall, led us carefully up a stone 
staircase to a wide balcony, opened a door into a palatial 
bedroom with a flourish; and demanded fifteen pesetas ‘ ‘ sin 
extraordinario.” Intuition told us that this was not a case 
of “Precio Fijo,” and we reduced him gently to eleven 
pesetas before we accepted the bargain. Then, to take off 
the raw edge left by the chaffering, Jan said: 

“I don’t suppose you get many foreigners here, Senor?” 

“Si, si!” returned the hotelkeeper, anxious for the repu¬ 
tation of his caravanserai. “We get quite a lot. Oh, yes, 
quite a lot. Why, only last year we had two French people, 
un matrimonio; and this year you have come.” 

The maid was in appearance and behaviour like an india- 
rubber ball, and the conviction was firmly fixed in her mind 
either that we couldn’t speak Spanish or that she could 
not understand if we did. So she grunted, bounced at us 
and smiled with her mouth wide open like a dog, hoping 
that by this means she was translating a Spanish welcome 
into an English one. With difficulty we dissuaded her from 
these antics and persuaded her to speak, but she turned 
her words—which were already dialect—into baby talk; 
and the less we understood the louder she shouted. 



CARTERS IN THE POSADA 








MURCIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


69 


However, she was a kindly creature and succeeded in 
cheering our spirits, which were flagging, for we were very 
tired and almost ill, having barely recovered from' a severe 
attack of influenza before leaving London. We washed off 
the thick dust and went downstairs into the large cool hall. 
The central quadrangle had once probably been open to 
the sky, but now was covered, five stories up, by a glass 
roof, beneath which sackcloth curtains stretched on wires 
shut out the sun. There were comfortable wicker chairs 
all about, and the hall was decorated with four solemn 
plaster busts, one in each corner. We were curious to find 
out who were thus honoured in a southern Spanish hotel. 
One was of Sorolla, a popular Valencian painter, one was 
of a woman, a poetess. The other two we did not know, 
but think they represented contemporary literature and 
architecture. Imagine finding in an English hotel hall 
busts of Brangwyn, Mrs. Meynell, Conan Doyle and 
Lutyens. 

The hall was cool. We ordered coffee and buttered toast. 
But the butter was rancid, for we had crossed the geo¬ 
graphical line, almost as important as the equator, below 
which butter is not, and oil must take its place. 

Four children, making a lot of noise over it, were in the 
hall, playing a game peculiarly Spanish. The smallest boy, 
who always had the dirty work to do, carried flat in front 
of him a hoard, to the end of which were fixed a pair of 
bulPs horns. He dashed these at his comrades in short 
straight rushes. Two of the other boys carried pieces of 
red cloth which they waved in front of the bull. The fourth 
boy carried a pair of toy banderillas, straight sticks, cov¬ 
ered with tinted paper and pointed wilh a nail. As the 
bull rushed the “banarillero ,, dabbed his sticks into a piece 
of cork. Then they decided that the bull was to die. One 
of the cloak-wavers took a toy sword which he triumphantly 
stuck into the cork. With a moan the small boy sank on 
to the floor. His companions seized his heels and dragged 
him round the tiled floor of the hall. The game seemed to 


70 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


us a little tedious; later on we were to learn how like to 
actual bullfighting it was. 

The hotel interpreter, for whom we had inquired, now 
came in. He spoke in French: 

“What can I do for you?” 

We wished to find a gipsy guitar-player named Bias, and 
we had been told that the interpreter knew his house. We 
feared that he might be in Madrid, where he sometimes 
played in the Flamenco cafes; but the interpreter said that 



he was in Murcia, and that we could look for him at once. 

From the cool hall we stepped into the blazing sun of 
midday Spain, crossed an open space so dazzling that it 
hurt the eyes, and entered a maze of narrow, tall streets. 
Jan and I moved along in single file, clinging to the narrow 
margins of shadow which edged the houses, while the inter¬ 
preter with a mere uniform cap on his head stalked imper¬ 
turbably in the sunlight. Across squares we hurried as 
rapidly as possible to the shadow on the opposite side. 


MUKCIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


71 


The houses were orange, pink, blue or a neutral grey which 
set off the hue of the tinted buildings. The squares were 
planted with feathery trees of a green so vivid that it 
appeared due to paint rather than to nature. 

It was a clear and windless day, and soon we remarked a 
characteristic which Murcia exhibited more strongly than 
any other Spanish town we have visited. Each house had 
exuded its own smell across the pavement, so as one went 
along one sampled a variety of Spanish household odours. 
Some people find an intimate connection between colour 
and smell. We might say that we passed successfully 
through a pink smell, a purple smell, a citron green smell, 
a terre verte smell (very nasty), a cobalt smell, a raw 
sienna smell, and so on. This characteristic clung to 
Murcia during the greater part of our stay. 

About fifteen minutes’ walk through these variegated 
odoriferous layers brought us into a street of mean appear¬ 
ance. The interpreter stopped before a large gateway 
door, pushed it open and ushered us into a courtyard in the 
corner of which was a black earthenware pot astew over an 
open fire. A brown-faced crone, withered with dirt and 
age, her clothes ragged, her feet shod in burst alpagatas, 
asked us what had brought us there. 

“Where is Bias?” said the interpreter. 

With an unctuous gesture the old gipsy crone spread 
out her hands, and turning to a doorway shouted out some 
words. Gipsy women young and old came from the house. 
They were dark, dirty and tousled, clad in draggled greys 
or vermilions, many carrying brown babies astraddle on 
the hip. With gestures, almost Indian in subservience, 
they crowded about us, looking at us with ill-disguised 
curiosity. The interpreter repeated his question. 

“Bias,” said a young, beautiful, though depressed- 
looking woman, “is not in the house.” 

“The English Senor will speak to him,” commanded the 
interpreter. “Send him to the hotel when he comes 
home.” 


72 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Then our friend the interpreter determined to earn a 
large tip, and calculating on our ignorance brought us 
back by the longest route, past all the principal buildings 
of the town; thereby quadrupling the journey through the 
baking streets. Our desires, however, were fixed on home. 
We were staggering beneath the heat. Had the interpreter 
but known it, his tip would have been increased by celerity; 
but, stung by our apathy over public monuments, he took 



us into a courtyard to look at some gigantic tomatoes 
gleaming in the shade, and ran us across the street to 
examine a skein of fine white catgut, dyed orange at the 
tips, which a workman was carrying. He explained that 
this was for medical operations and for fishing lines, which 
was a local industry. 

Lunch was ready when we got back, a prolonged and 
delicious lunch for those in health, but we could eat little 
of it. Black olives were in a dish on the table; and the 




MURCIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


73 


fruit included large ripe figs, peaches, pears and apricots. 
A curious fact we had noted was that much of the fruit 
did not ripen properly. Either it was unripe or else had 
begun to rot in the centre. The sun was too strong to 
allow it to reach the stage of exquisite ripeness which the 
more temperate climate of England encourages. The 
waiter was dismayed by our lack of appetite. He urged 
us repeatedly to further gastronomic efforts, and holding 
dishes beneath our noses stirred up the contents with a 
fork. At last he made us a special salad which was not 
on the menu. The other occupants of the long white 
restaurant were all fat men who swallowed course after 
course in spite of the heat. We looked at them and 
thought: “No wonder there are so many plump people in 
Spain. ’ 9 

After coffee in the large hall, we went to our bedroom 
for a rest. The windows of our room looked southwards, 
over the muddy river. Immediately beneath was a road 
on which was a wayside stall of bottles and old ironwork, 
an ice-cream vendor, a boy roasting coffee on a stove, turn¬ 
ing a handle round and round while the coffee beans rustled 
in the heated iron globe, sending up a delicious smell to 
our windows. A row of covered carriages, tartanas, waited 
beneath the shadows of the riverside trees. All along the 
opposite bank were two-storied mills, and beyond them 
the town stretched out in a wedge of flat roofs bursting 
up into church towers. Green market gardens came up 
to the edge of the town, and covered the valley to the base 
of the hills with a dense growth of flat and flourishing green 
which one had not expected thus far south in Spain. 

We were awakened from our siesta by the spherical maid 
who mouthed and pantomimed that a Senor was waiting 
for us in the hall. Luis Garay, a young painter and lithog¬ 
rapher to whom our friend had written about us, had come 
at the earliest opportunity. He was slim, sallow, almost 
dapper, with dark frank eyes, and we took a liking to him 
at once. Together we went outside the hotel and sat at 


74 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


a table in the open place facing the principal promenade of 
Murcia. The river was on the right-hand side, and on the 
left was a line of tall buildings, some cafes, others muni¬ 
cipal. The heat attacked one in waves; it seemed as pal¬ 
pable as though it possessed substance. When we took 
our seats the plaza was empty because the siesta was not 
yet over, but after four o’clock had passed gradually the 
life of the town blossomed out. 

The army of beggars attacked us; in monotonous under¬ 
tones they moaned their woes. 

“Hermanito, una limosna qui Dios se la pagara,” 1 they 
whined. 

To those who seemed unworthy Luis answered, “Dios 
le ayude .” 2 

How exquisite is the courtesy of the Spaniard even to a 
beggar. Our manners have not this fine habitual touch— 
after the international occupation of Scutari the beggars of 
the town had learned two English phrases; one was 
“G’arn,” the other “git away.” It is true that under this 
harsh exterior the Englishman may hide a soft heart; he 
may be like the schoolmaster who feels the caning more 
poignantly than does the schoolboy; indeed many a man 
puts a deliberately rough exterior on to mask the flab¬ 
biness of his sentimental nature; and the Spaniard, for all 
his courtesy, may have the harder nature. Yet the cour¬ 
tesy which recognizes a common level of humanity is a 
precious thing. It may be that by refusing alms with 
respect one may be preserving in the beggar finer qualities 
than would be generated by giving with contempt. A 
Spaniard once said, “I like a beggar to say ‘Hermanito, 
alms which God will repay.’ It is naif and simple. It 
has a beauty for which one willingly pays a copper. But 
when a beggar whines that he has eaten nothing for three 
days, it is offensive. It is an insult to give a man a half- 


1 “Little brother, alms which God Himself will repay. 5 

2 “God will help you.” 



MURCIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


75 


penny who has eaten nothing for three days; and one 
cannot afford to give him the price of a square meal; and 
anyhow one knows that he is lying.” 

As well as the pitiful beggars there w T ere the musical 
beggars. Two men came playing the guitar and laud. 
Another followed with a gramophone which he carried from 
his shoulder by a strap. Then came the barrel-organ. 
We had not noted its arrival. Suddenly the most appal¬ 
ling din broke out. Awhile ago in Paris M. Marinetti 
organized a futurist orchestra; one could imagine that it 
had been transported in miniature to Murcia. There were 
bangs and thumps and crashes of cymbals, and tattoos of 
drums, and tinkles of treble notes, and plonkings of base 
notes intermixed apparently without order, rhythm or 
tune. What a state the barrel must have been in! Once 
we presume that it played a tune, but now it was so decrepit 
that nothing as such was recognizable. It was dragged by 
a donkey and a cart and shepherded by a fat white dog 
which had been shaved, partly because of the heat, partly 
because of vermin. It was an indecent-looking dog, and 
the flesh stood out in rolls all round its joints. No sooner 
had this musical horror disappeared round the corner than 
another organ in an equal state of disrepair took its place. 

“It is all right,” Luis reassured us; “you have suffered 
the worst. There are only two in the town.” 

A crowd of urchins carrying home-made boot-blacking 
boxes pestered us with offers of “Limpia botas.” A man 
and a woman sauntered between the tables bellowing and 
screaming “Les numeros”; these were state lottery sellers. 

Also there were sellers of local lotteries, which were pro¬ 
moted by the Church in aid of the disabled whom they em¬ 
ployed to sell the tickets. Nuns, too, were amongst the 
beggers. There were boys selling newspapers; men sell¬ 
ing meringues and pastry, others hawking fried almonds, 
very salt to excite thirst; children hunting between the legs 
of the tables and chairs for cast cigarette ends or straws 
discarded by the drinkers; a man peddling minor toilet 


76 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


articles—toothpicks, scent, powder, buttonhooks—and an¬ 
other with a basket of very odorous dried fish. 

The smell of the fish banished our new-won universal 
brotherhood and we waved the fish vender away without 
courtesy. But an elegantly dressed young man sitting 
near accosted him and began to chaff him. But what was 
pretence to the dude was earnest to the salesman. He had 
some talent for selling and he pestered the dude for nearly 
half an hour, at the end of which the latter in self-defence 
and for the sake of peace bought a portion of the smelly 
commerce. Probably the fishmonger’s total gain out of the 
transaction was a fraction of a penny. But the Spanish 
is not a wasteful nation. When the dude walked off home 
he took with him the fish wrapped in his newspaper. 

At last we called the waiter by the Spanish custom of 
clapping the hands, paid for the drinks, and guided by Luis 
set out to visit the house which our friend had lent us for 
the summer. Habits of cleanliness were shown in the 
streets. Young girls were hard at work, each industriously 
brushing the dust from the side-walk in front of her house, 
even though that side-walk were itself of dried mud. To 
us it seemed that the story was being repeated of the old 
woman who tried to besom the tide out of her front door. 

Many of the householders had spread their sphere of 
influence even beyond the side-walk, and had soaked their 
patch of road, turning the dust into viscous mud. The 
pavements were already beginning to be encumbered by 
chairs, and by groups of people sitting out in the cool¬ 
ing day. 

The Paseo de Corveras is a one-sided street darkened 
by tall trees. On the other side stretch maize fields sur¬ 
rounding a small farm, and walled-in gardens filled with 
tall feathery date palms. The dates were already hanging 
in orange clusters beneath the sprouting heads of fronds. 
Luis took us to the house of Antonio Garrigos, who lived 
at No. 12. 

Antonio was a handsome man of pure Spanish type, 







r- 


A MURCIAN BEGGAR-WOMAN 











MURCIA—FIRST IMPRESSIONS 


77 


giving an impression of nervous vitality. He produced 
three keys, each of about a pound in weight and large as 
any key of a theatrical gaoler. The house key was of 
monstrous size, and he assured us that we would have to 
carry it with us wherever we went. Our friend’s apart¬ 
ment at No. 26 was on the first floor and spread right across 
two humbler dwellings below. It was cool and roomy, 
filled with specimens of Spanish draperies, pottery and 
furniture, which he had collected during several years in 
Spain. At the back was a kitchen, with large earthen ves¬ 
sels for water, and Spanish grids for cooking on charcoal. 
The bed was big for one, but very small for two, so we 
suggested taking off the spring mattress and laying planks 
in its place. Antonio at once said that to-morrow he would 
get the planks in time for the night. 

Then, feeling very tired but thoroughly pleased with 
our prospective house, and with the new acquaintances 
we had found, we walked back to the hotel, had a supper 
as liberal as the lunch, and went to bed. 


CHAPTER IX 


MTJKCIA—SETTLING DOWN 

B Y the time we left the hotel, which we did on the 
second day, the maid had reviewed her decision as 
to the state of our mentality. Receiving her tips she 
shook our hands warmly, asked where we were going and 
said that she would without fail call upon us. The tatter¬ 
demalion bootblack at the hotel door, who could never quite 
make up his mind whether he were bootblack or lottery- 
ticket seller—neglecting each business in favour of the 
other—helped us with our luggage. He also on receipt of 
a tip inquired our future address and assured us that he 
would call upon us. The driver of the tartana told us that 
he would look us up one day to see how we were getting 
on; and another visit was promised by a ragged lounger 
whom we called in to aid us in getting our luggage upstairs. 
1 * Spain, ’ , we said, ‘ ‘ seems to be a sociable country. ’ ’ 
Don Antonio was waiting for us at his house, which was 
but a few doors away from our own. He introduced us to 
his wife, a buxom, jolly woman of about twenty-five; his 
sister, tall, elegant and dark, perhaps the most complete 
type of Spanish woman we had yet met; and his brother- 
in-law. Don Thomas, for such was the brother-in-law’s 
name, was able to speak a portion of the American lan¬ 
guage, and often by his imperfect knowledge he would 
deepen our ignorance of what others were saying in 
Spanish. 

Don Antonio had a small box factory. His house was two- 
storied, as were most of the houses in the Paseo. On the 
ground floor the front room, or entrada, was filled with 
wood, wood-working benches, and stacks of unfinished 

78 


MURCIA—SETTLING DOWN 


79 


boxes; the kitchen behind was not exempt from business, 
for here Antonio made up his glues and pastes, while the 
whole top story was occupied by girls who covered the 
crude shells of the boxes with velvet and looking-glass and 
papier mache adornments. Antonio and his wife were 
crowded into two small rooms, a bedroom in the front 
alongside of the entrada and a dining-room at the back 
parallel with the kitchen. 

Our planks were ready for us, but Antonio refused to be 
paid for them. He said that when we had finished with 
them he could make boxes out of them. We spent the after¬ 
noon in our flat unpacking and arranging the plank bed. 
The mattress was not broad enough to cover the planks 
which we put down, but we managed to find a padded sofa¬ 
covering which, laid alongside of the mattress, supple¬ 
mented the inefficient breadth. As we had met neither 
mosquitoes nor net in the hotel, we left the mosquito-net 
in the trunk. 

In the evening Luis Garay called for us. He led us 
through a maze of darkened streets, at one time skirting 
the tall, over-decorated rococo front of the cathedral, and 
brought us to a large doorway within which was a smaller 
door. Two sharp raps and the door swung wide mechani¬ 
cally, though a long rope tied to the latch and looping its 
way upstairs showed how it had been opened. Up wide 
white stone stairs we went, watched by an old, old man 
hanging over the balcony of the second floor. Luis said 
no word to him, nor he to Luis. 

The chief keynote of Spanish interiors is whiteness. The 
room into which we came was white, and out of it was 
another white room set with dining-tables and decorated 
with a huge white filter. This was “Eliaswhere we 
could dine excellently for the sum of one peseta fifty centi- 
mos apiece. 

Elias himself looked like a cheery monk painted by 
Dendy Sadler. Clad in a long white overall, he stood in 
the midst of his snowy tables and greeted us merrily. 


80 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Luis went away, having said good night, for he had an 
engagement. We ate omelet, beefsteak and fried potatoes, 
finishing with a plate of fruit, fixed by the multiple stare 
of the young men dining there. I was the only woman at 
Elias’ while we dined there, for Spanish women are home- 
clinging folk, and even to the cafes they never go in large 
numbers. 

As the young men finished their meals, they went out. 
Each one as he passed through the door bowed and said 
something. It sounded like “Dobro Vetche,” but “Dobro 
Vetche” is Serbian for good evening. We could not make 
out what the words were, so, as the Serbian seemed to be 
appropriate, we boldly answered it in return. Later on 
we discovered that they said “Buen Aproveche” with the 
first part of the sentence slurred over by habit. It means 
“May it do you good,” and the customary sentence to say 
to any one who is dining. The correct answer is ‘ ‘ Gracias. ’ ’ 

We left Elias’ very satisfied with our cheap discovery. 
Jan, who generally has a good head for locality, engaged 
to find his way back without a guide. But he turned the 
wrong way out of Elias’ door. We wandered amongst deep 
darkened streets till suddenly we came out into one as 
narrow as the others, but laid with flat pavements, instead 
of rugged cobbles, and blazing with light. Through this we 
ran the gauntlet of Murcia. The street was crowded with 
hotels and cafes, both sides being lined with tables at 
which the evening drinkers were sitting. The street itself 
was filled with a flux and reflux of the youth and beauty, 
the “Hooventud, Bellitza and Looho ,” 1 of the town. 

We came, especially I, upon them as a catastrophe. The 
light died out of their eyes, the smiles disappeared from 
their faces, mouths dropped open, fingers pointed, people 
grasped each other. It was similar to the moment when 

i (Spelt phonetically.) These three words, meaning youth, beauty and 
luxury, are used in all Spanish theatre advertisements as especial attractions 
of the spectacle advertised. 


MURCIA—SETTLING DOWN 81 

an elephant comes along in the village circus procession, 
and I was the elephant. 

During our first weeks in Murcia our appearance in 
the streets invariably caused excitement and shrieks of 
laughter among young girls and gossips. If we entered 
a shop the children crowded in with us to listen to our 
attempts at Spanish. This was not done with deliberate 
rudeness, hut was more the result of unrestrained curiosity. 
This attitude was not very evident when we went for 
strolls with Luis: the presence of a fellow-townsman 
seemed to have a calming influence. At last I found an 
effective weapon. With mock horror I stared at the feet 
and ankles of any young woman too malicious. Self- 
consciousness at once gripped her—almost invariably she 
hurried away to examine her shoes and wonder what was 
wrong with them. 

Curiously enough we never became conscious of a case 
of incivility among the men. Even groups of lads at the 
difficult age which breeds larrikins in Australia were on 
the whole less offensive than in other countries. It seemed 
to us that if a Spanish woman were kind-hearted—and the 
majority are so—she was the most kindly and charming of 
women, but if of a spiteful nature she took less pains to 
hide or curb it than do the women of more sophisticated 
countries. 

The narrow street which we had discovered by accident 
was perhaps the most disconcerting part of the town, as 
it was full of cafes, and therefore of loungers; but we often 
had to go there for small necessities. There we had to go 
for smoked glasses because of the brilliance of the sun, for 
a parasol, and for a hatpin. The first two objects were 
easily found, but the last was difficult. Hats, even in 
Southern Spain, are worn only by the creme de la creme 
for great ceremonies, and the hatpins sold by the jewellers 
were intended for such occasions. They were decorated 
affairs with huge heads of complicated workmanship set 


82 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


with garish stones. Probably no other woman in the town 
wore a hat for normal use, so we gave up the search and 
Jan made out of hairpins something which served. 

We ran the gauntlet of the quizzing street and made our 
way home. 

All along the streets the people had brought their chairs 
out of doors and were sitting on the pavements in the cool 
of the night. At Antonio’s door we found a group of his 
family, almost invisible in the dark. We sat down with 
them. Presently Antonio sad: 

“I will go and fetch Don Luis, and he will play for us.” 

What then could be seen of Don Luis was a large nose, a 
check cap and a pair of gnarled hands which grasped his 
guitar in a capable manner. He sat down on a chair on 
the side-walk and began to play. 

“Curse it!” he exclaimed. “Do you know I used to 
play very well, but all this factory work ruins the fingers 
for playing. Mine are getting as stiff as if they had no 
joints in them.” 

Presently he was playing a jota and demanded that some¬ 
body should dance. 

“Dance, dance!” he shouted. “Curse it! What’s the 
good of playing if nobody dances!” 

By this time most of the inhabitants of the houses near 
had gathered round, although almost hidden; but there 
were no young men. Antonio’s sister danced a jota with 
a pretty girl. The jota is the most common of Spanish 
dances, as the waltz used to be with us. It has a tempo 
which fluctuates between three-four and two-four, the 
phrases being divided into two beats each or three bars 
of two beats each at the will of the player. The jota that 
evening appeared to be a very sedate kind of dance. When 
it was over the crowd urged us to dance something Eng¬ 
lish. We asked Don Luis to play the jota again, and to it 
we danced a rather mad waltz which we had invented. The 
path upon which we danced was of dried mud, which is 
pounded into unusual shapes in the winter and dries in 


MURCIA—SETTLING DOWN 


83 


whatever shape it happens to he when the heat comes. It 
was full of lumps and holes, and the light was dim. In a 
moment we partially understood why Antonio’s sister had 
been so sedate. But the brother-in-law informed us: 

“Say,” he said, “my girl can dance wonderful. But 
’tain’t proper, in de towni. Say, you see ’er in de country. 
Den she hop. She kick de window in wid ’er toe. Sure, 
Show you one day . 9 * 

Murcia is a town of about 100,000 inhabitants and is the 
capital of its province, but it is hardly more than an over¬ 
grown village in spite of its cathedral, its bullring, its 
theatre and its cinema palace. Both at Avila and at 
Madrid they had said to us: “Aha, you are going to the 
town of the beautiful women!” 

But the women of Murcia, with the exception of some 
lovely and filthy gipsies, were not unusually beautiful. They 
were thick-set and useful looking with muscular necks and 
ankles, and their eyes had a domesticated expression. Their 
clothes emphasized their defects. They indulged in pastel 
shades and frills which were used in fantastic ways. We 
have seen frills in spiral twisting around the frock from 
neck to hem, or a series of jaunty inverted frills round the 
hips, which gave to the wearer something of the appearance 
of one of those oleographs of a maiden half emerging from 
the calyx of a flower: or perpendicular frills which made 
the wearer resemble a cog-wheel. 

We had ample opportunities of observing them from the 
windows of our house, at which we started our experimen¬ 
tal sketches in Spain, but we had to sit back from the 
balcony because small crowds began to gather, and boys to 
shout. Antonio then said that he would take us to one of 
the big walled-in gardens where we could paint at our 
ease. 

A huge gateway led into a courtyard which was com¬ 
pletely covered by a vine pergola. The grapes hung in 
large bunches, though yet green. At one side of the court¬ 
yard was a low stall on which fruit and vegetables were 


84 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


for sale, and near an arched door a woman was washing 
clothes in a large basin of antique pattern. The garden 
was a rich mass of green. Huge trees of magnolia were 
covered with waxy white flowers and gave out a strong 
odour which scented the wide garden. Lemon trees and 
orange trees were ranged in rows; the lemons yellow on the 
trees or lying on the ground as thick as fallen apples after 
an autumn storm, the oranges still hard spheres of dark 
green. Along the edges of the paths stood up the tall 
palm trees with their golden clusters of unripe dates, or 
with their fronds tied up in a stiff spike, some mystery of 
palm cultivation. Fronds of palm, hacked from off the 
trees, lay about the ground, and we were surprised to find 
by experience that they possessed long, piercing and painful 
thorns. 

We painted for several days in this small paradise, hut 
our conscience was accusing us. We had not come to Spain 
to paint gardens. One day we took our courage in our 
hands. 

“It is market day,” said we; “we will go and paint the 
market. 9 ’ 

Peasant carts loaded with fruit and vegetables were 
crowding into the town; men clad in black cottons were 
dragging donkeys, upon the backs of which were panniers 
filled with saleable provisions; women with umbrellas aloft 
against the sun carried baskets in their arms or heavy 
packages upon their hips. The market was spread in the 
sunlight behind the Hotel Reina Victoria. Grain was for 
sale in broad, flat baskets, cheap cottons were on stalls; 
fruits—peaches, plums, and lemons—were mixed with to¬ 
matoes, berenginas, and red or green peppers. To one 
side of the market place was the fonda which had once 
been a monastery. This was for the travellers by road as 
the hotels were for travellers by rail. In a huge arched 
entrada carters and villagers were sitting at their ease. 
To one side was a kitchen in which could be seen large 


MURCIA—SETTLING DOWN 


85 


red earthen vessels which made one think of the last scene 
in “The Forty Thieves,” and beyond the entrada was an 
open courtyard in which the high tilted road waggons were 
drawn up in rows. 

Skirting the fonda wall I found a corner which seemed 
secluded, and sitting down I began to paint an old woman 
and her fruit stall. One by one a few people gathered be¬ 
hind me. Bias, the gipsy musician, came up, greeted me, 
and added his solid presence to the spectators. A baker 
came out of his shop and watched. The crowd began to in¬ 
crease. Soon they were pressing all around, even in front, 
so that I could see nothing. 

“I cannot paint if I cannot see,” I exclaimed to Bias. 

He and the baker set themselves one on each side and 
hustled an opening in the crowd. 

“Atras, atras!” they shouted. “En la cola, en la 
cola.” 1 

But more and more people hurried up to see what was 
happening. Soon the crowd, despite the strenuous efforts 
of Bias and the baker, closed up again in front, and no 
efforts could keep an open vista. 

Jan, who had been drawing in another part of the market, 
came up. He saw in the midst of a maelstrom of heads the 
extreme tip of my hat and worked his way through, to 
speaking distance. Brown-faced old women, with market 
baskets, men with turkeys hung in braces over their shoul¬ 
ders, young women with babies, gipsy men with tall hats 
and gig-whips, noisy boys, all smiling, friendly and curious, 
were peeping under my hat discussing the phenomenon. 

We left the disappointed maelstrom, which changed its 
shape and followed us like a rivulet to a cafe, where they 
stood for a while gazing solemnly while we sipped iced cof¬ 
fee. We then decided that sketching in the streets of 
Murcia was not to be thought of. Luis, to whom we con- 


1 “Back, back! Get into queue, get into queue! 



86 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


fided this, said that he would find us balconies and roofs 
from which we could work, but we wanted to settle in some 
small village where we could know everybody in a day, and 
sketch where we liked, so Luis made arrangements to take 
us across the plain at the foot of the mountains to see some 
villages that might suit us. 


CHAPTER X 


MTJKCIA—BLAS 

S PAIN is the true home of the guitar. Only in Spain is 
the guitar—the most complete of solo instruments— 
heard in its true perfection. But even in Spain the 
cult of the guitar is dying out. Nowadays, at marriages, 
births or christenings the guitar is no longer inevitable, for 
the cheap German piano and the gramophone are ousting 
the national instrument. Jan had become enamoured of the 
guitar in Paris, some small progress he had made with the 
help of a friend; but one cannot get the true spirit of 
Spanish music at second hand. So Bias, the gipsy, was 
called in to give him instruction. 

We had been told not to give Bias more than twenty 
pesetas a month, these to be full payment for a daily lesson. 
However, Bias proved to be more adept at bargaining than 
we were. He looked very Egyptian in the face, was very 
smart in a grey check suit, patent leather boots and straw 
hat, a strange contrast to the poverty of his home and the 
slatterns of women who were his family and relations. He 
came in rubbing his hands together, grinning with an ex¬ 
panse of strong, white teeth, and showing a sly expression 
in his curious eyes. He cringed to us. 

He demanded two pesetas a lesson, or sixty pesetas a 
month. We held out that we had been told to offer him 
twenty. This, he answered, was impossible, quite impos¬ 
sible, out of the question. Some of his subserviency was 
immediately put into his pocket. Jan said that as he would 
be painting a g6od deal he would not want more than three 
lessons a week. Bias hummed and hawed and chewed the 

87 


88 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


idea for a while. Then, with the air of one who is making a 
great concession, he said that since it was the Senor and 
since he appeared “muy sympatico” he would consent to 
take twenty-five pesetas, and that was his final offer. Jan 
agreed. Bias then added that he was reducing his terms 
solely because of the sympathetic nature of the Senor, and 
that he was by no means satisfied with the bargain, and 
that it was “muy poco.” He then asked Jan if he had a 
guitar. Jan said that he was using the big white instru¬ 
ment made by Ramirez which our friend had left in his 
house. Bias answered that he possessed the brother of 
that instrument himself, and that it was a good one. 

Only after he had gone did we realize that three lessons 
a week meant twelve lessons a month, and, at his original 
price, this would have amounted to twenty-four pesetas, 
and that Bias had wheedled out a peseta more than his 
original offer. 

We do not like the bargaining system which is prevalent 
all over Spain, a habit from which, in spite of their stern 
notices, the “precio fijo” shops are not quite exempt. We 
are not registering this objection because Bias cozened us 
of a peseta; but it seems to us that the whole habit of chaf¬ 
fering inculcates a lack of generosity and lays a foundation 
of unfriendly relationships between people. No matter 
upon what friendly terms the bargaining is carried out, 
too much of an element of positive personal competition is 
brought in; but much bargaining is not carried on in a 
friendly way. It also necessitates a wholesale campaign of 
lying—appreciative and depreciative—on the part of both 
buyer and seller, and a certain amount of personal feeling 
on the side of the loser. Nor does the constant simulation 
of anger tend to make a person more pacific by habit. 
Curiously enough the most generous man is often the worst 
treated by the bargaining system. He offers a sum in ex¬ 
cess of the real value in order to shorten the ordeal, and 
by doing so only excites the seller to greater cupidity. We 
have noted that the successful bargainer is treated with 


MURCIA—BLAS 


89 


respect, while the other who cuts short the bargain by pay¬ 
ing too much earns contempt. 

Bias came to our house at about twelve o ’clock. He was 
a true musician and lived—as far as we could discover— 
for but two things, music and drink. He had seemed to 
understand our Spanish well enough to get the better of 
the bargain, but he had forgotten this. He, like the maid, 



had a fixed idea that Jan could not speak Spanish. He 
grinned, and made strange noises, but never tried to explain 
anything by means of words. One cannot say that he was 
a good teacher. All that he could do was to play a piece 
over and over again, and trust you to get it by ear. Now 
and again he would grasp Jan’s fingers and try to force 
them into the necessary positions. He was even incapable 




90 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


of playing his tunes slowly. If Jan wished to analyse a 
movement which came in the middle of a melody Bias had to 
begin at the beginning. Sometimes Jan was almost in 
despair, but he worked hard and in the end drew a profit 
out of Bias’s inadequate instruction. 

Spanish guitar music is unlike the music of Europe. It 
has a strange primitive character depending for its marvel¬ 
lous rhythmic properties upon a rhythm of phrase more 
than upon the rhythm of the bar division. The form is 
simple, a passage played with the back of the nails across 
the strings, called the “Rasgueado,” a passage like a re¬ 
frain or chorus, “the Paseo,” in reality the introduction of 
the dance or melody, and the melodies proper called “Fal- 
setas.” The rhythmic structure which does not correspond 
to the bar division of the music is usually emphasized by 
drum taps made upon the sound hoard of the guitar with 
the nail of the second finger. 

Bias considered it his duty to teach Jan two falsetas on 
each visit. 

But if he was a bad teacher, he was a fine player. Rest¬ 
ing his chin on the great guitar as if the passage of the 
vibrations through his body were a source of pleasure, he 
crouched, looking like something between a bullfrog and 
a Cheshire cat. 

Then with supple fingers he played, drawing delicious 
melodies; or rasping with his nails he beat out complex 
harmonies that seemed to vie with an orchestra in richness 
of sound. 

When he came to a falseta, he would throw up his negroid 
eyes like a Greco saint, he would kiss his hand, and, as likely 
as not, spit on the floor to emphasize his delight. 

Before he left the house he always tried to get an advance 
upon his salary. After all, to him we were only Busne to he 
fleeced if possible. But when his indebtedness amounted 
to the whole of his month’s pay we fended him off by say¬ 
ing that we had no change. 

I do not think we realized how much we were overpaying 


MURCIA—BLAS 


91 


Bias until we decided to leave Murcia. We found a house, 
as you will hear, at Verdolay about five miles away. When 
he heard that we were leaving, Bias volunteered to come 
out as usual for the same pay. He said that he would 
cheerfully walk the distance—ten miles—for that money. 
But we were getting rather shy of Bias. He was too per¬ 
sistent a borrower for our slender means and we had heard 
of other teachers who were cheaper. So we took this op¬ 
portunity and dropped him as a pilot to the guitar. 


CHAPTER XI 


MURCIA—THE ALPAGATA SHOP 

S AVE upon feast days, and with the exception of the 
nobility, who are few, and of the merchants, who have 
to be worldly commonplace, alpagatas, or string-soled 
shoes, are the footwear of the Spanish nation. If you 
dodge the big towns you may go for days and never see a 
boot. The agricultural labourer, the artisan, the beggar, 
the soldier, the engine-driver, the porters all wear either 
the alpagata or, in the summer, its cooler brother, the string- 
soled sandal. In Spain boots are not meant for real wear; 
you swagger around the town in boots, and have them 
cleaned four or five times a day. At a cafe a horde of 
bootblacks precipitate themselves towards you to renew 
the lustre—possibly dimmed by the all-prevalent dust—of 
those foot ornaments. The young man who goes to meet 
his novia removes his alpagatas, and puts on boots highly 
polished and with check tops; the young maiden who is 
sitting out with her novio has placed her alpagatas in the 
corner and stretches high-heeled shoes across the pavement. 
But for all-day-up-and-down use the alpagata wins every 
time; the baby wears alpagatas, and its grandmother wears 
a larger variant; there are white alpagatas, brown alpa¬ 
gatas, grey alpagatas, black alpagatas for those in mourn¬ 
ing—a very important ceremony in Spain—and there are 
the elaborate, almost Eastern, alpagatas, entirely of esparto 
grass, the making of which occupies the time when the goat¬ 
herd is not yelling at his goats. Even the horsemen, the 
Caballeros, often wear alpagatas. It is true that one can¬ 
not strap a spur on to an alpagata, but on the whole spurs 
are little used in Spain. If the rider wishes his horse or 

92 


MURCIA—THE ALPAGATA SHOP 


93 


donkey to mend his pace, he thumps the animal with a thick 
cudgel at about the place where St. Dunstan kicked the 
devil. 

The alpagata is also a cheap form of footwear. Those 
which we were wearing cost three pesetas, say 60 cents. 
They should last two months. We were therefore spending 
30 cents a month each on shoes. A little arithmetic will 
show this as $3.60 a year. To-day boots alone cost more than 
this in repairs, not counting the first cost. For children, 
of course, they are unrivalled, as the life of the alpagata 
almost fits the growth of the infant, w T hich is spared the 
torture one remembers in childhood of boots which were 
too good to throw away and yet too small to wear with 
ease. But to taste the full romantic flavour of the alpagata, 
it should have been bought in the true alpagata shop. If 
you are in Spain don’t go to the boot-shop. It does sell 
alpagatas, but it ought not to do so. In Spain the boot- 
seller should be classed with the jeweller. He sells orna¬ 
ments. The boot merchant who sells alpagatas in Spain 
is as bad as the jeweller here who sells umbrellas. Go 
to the shop which sells things for the road, for that pictur¬ 
esque, coloured, moving life of Spain. The doorway of 
this fascinating shop is piled up with bales of a rough cloth 
of an exquisite hyacinthine blue, or of a strange yellow, 
which is seen to perfection only in the alpagata shop or 
in El Greco’s pictures. This cloth is used for lining horse- 
collars and saddles. Above these beautiful bales are col¬ 
lars of white leather, heavy with small cone-shaped bells 
of copper, for the goats, larger collars of brown leather, 
either with small bells in rows, like a lady’s pearl collar, or 
with one large bell pendant, for the oxen. Within are large 
coronet-shaped semi-circles of leather and coloured wool¬ 
work, red, yellow, black, white, for the oxen’s foreheads, 
long ribbons of coloured woolwork for the donkeys’ 
harness, and fringes of brightly coloured wool netting, end¬ 
ing in tassels, like that which decorated the under edge of 
our grandmothers’ sofas, to hang across the donkey’s chest 


94 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


or down his nose. Muzzles for goats and for donkeys are 
here too. There is harness also in the shop, Gargantuan- 
looking harness studded with nails, so broad in its facets 
of leather that when the horse has his face inside it he 
looks not unlike an ancient knight in his armour. Only his 
eyes and his mouth are visible, and often indeed not the 
latter, for it may he guarded by a piece of leather work 
not unlike the tongue of a brogue shoe. 

Talking of shoes brings us back to the alpagata. A man 
will be working at a table like a butcher’s block. Deftly he 
cuts the rope, bending it around an iron peg into the shape 
of the sole, then with a long awl he pierces it through and 
through, sewing it with great rapidity, and almost hey 
presto! as it were, a pair of soles are finished. Women 
who sit almost on the edge of the street, chattering and 
gossiping—often with the passers-by—are making the up¬ 
pers of stout canvas. They spring from work to serve 
you with a gracious kindliness, and seeing that you are 
English they probably with the same gracious kindliness 
clap an extra fifty centimos on to the price. If only we 
had such an alpagata shop in London what a rush there 
would be to purchase. 

Your old alpagatas you leave behind you. What hap¬ 
pens to them is to us a mystery. Old boots are the nuisance 
of the London dust heaps, the terror of the errant mongrel. 
Yorick, who, Sam Weller assures us, is the only person 
who has ever seen a dead donkey, may also in his travels 
have seen an extinct alpagata, but his ‘‘Sentimental 
Journey” is unfinished and we shall never know. 


CHAPTER XII 


MURCIA—BRAVO TORO 

A LONG cool colonnade of raw-coloured brick, up a 
staircase arched with concrete, and out through a 
sort of concrete culvert which spouted humanity, we 
came into the huge round amphitheatre of the bullring. 
Owing to Spanish dilatoriness, we were later than we had 
intended, and in consequence were unable to get seats within 
the coveted shadow which lay over half the great enclosure; 
but, thank goodness, the sky was mottled with clouds 
which tempered both the heat and the glare of the Spanish 
afternoon. We were in the cheapest seats, having dis¬ 
dained to go skywards into the boxes, for we had come 
to taste the full flavour of an average bullfight as a popular 
spectacle, and we wished it as pure as possible. So we had 
bought purple tickets for two pesetas and a white one for 
me at half price; at the same time repelling the persistence 
of a feminine hawker, who pressed upon us large flabby 
looking paper bags of mysterious content which we im¬ 
agined to be some form of refreshment. The seats of the 
bullring were of flat stone rising tier upon tier, and we 
chose our places low down to get a good view, yet as near 
as possible to the slowly creeping shadow; only one row 
of stone seats and two rows of chairs of iron lattice sep¬ 
arated us from the arena itself. The chairs were empty, 
so I asked Luis if they were reserved for some special pur¬ 
pose. “No,” he answered, “but the bull may leap out of 
the ring. Those chairs would entangle him, but it is un¬ 
comfortable if you happen to be sitting there, so they are 
not very popular. ’ ’ As the edge of the arena was guarded 
by a palisade of stout planking about five feet high, through 


96 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


which were cut narrow gaps—bolt-holes—for the toreadors, 
and the seats were separated from this palisade by a pas¬ 
sage some six feet wide, the lowest seats being set some 
ten feet above the floor, I felt that the risk of finding an 
enraged bull in one’s lap was rather remote. 

The culverts spouted Spanish humanity: soldiers in 
greenish khaki; women in black, white or colours dominated 
by a very popular pink; peasants in blue blouses and san¬ 
dals ; bourgeoisie in straw hats and drill; youths in caps of 
exaggerated English cut. Immediately below us two small 
children, mothered by a third aged about eleven, all three 
exceedingly unkempt, rather dirty, and possibly verminous, 
took their seats, and, recognizing that I was a stranger, 
advised me in hoarse whispers all though the progress of 
the spectacle. In spite of her obvious poverty the eldest 
girl wore a large tortoise-shell comb of elaborate pattern 
in a carefully arranged coiffure. Numberless children 
seemed to have attended the spectacle thus, as the small 
Londoners go to the cinema. At this moment the ring itself 
was full of them, some playing football, a game very pop¬ 
ular—there is even a Spanish periodical called Free-Kick — 
others giving imitation exhibitions of bullfighting, more 
or less like that played by the children in the hotel. When 
the imitation bull, stabbed to death, was dragged around 
the ring, the real spectators cheered loudly. We won¬ 
dered what the hull’s mother would say about the state of 
his pants. 

This was no Mantilla day, nor day of fiesta. It was just 
an ordinary Sunday afternoon diversion in this provincial 
town. We took our first dose of bullfight in this place for a 
reason. Essentially a popular sport should be judged as a 
sport of the people: not by its highest exponents, but by 
its average. An intelligent foreigner would not get the 
truest impression of what cricket means to England at 
Lord’s or at the Oval; but on some village green at an inter- 
parochial contest. 

The horrors of bullfighting began with a hand, the age of 


MURCIA—BRAVO TORO 


97 


the bandsmen varying between fourteen and seventy years. 
The band marched around the ring playing music as out of 
tune as the new age is with the old. The ring emptied 
of children, and two horsemen superbly mounted dashed 
across the arena to demand from the President the key 
of the hull-pen. This was followed by a general parade 
of the toreros. Alas, for romance! Their gilt was some¬ 
what tarnished, most of their cloaks worn and faded; 
usually the only part of the costume which seemed to have 
retained its original brilliance was the coloured seat of the 
tight trousers, which I suppose comes in for very little wear 
and tear. The picadors with their nail-headed lances 
seemed veritable Don Quixotes on their more than Rosi- 
nante steeds: poor beasts doomed to the knackers anyhow. 
The procession ended with two cart-horses and a yoke 
destined to drag the slaughtered bulls from the ring. 

There was a pause. Luis said in a low murmur: 

* 1 Doesn’t your heart heat 1 Isn’t this moment exciting 1 ’ 9 

He spoke truly. Around the huge oval all eyes were con¬ 
centrated on the red door of the bull-pen: the very air 
seemed rarefied and electric. For me, I think this was the 
most tense moment of the day: that moment before any¬ 
thing had happened. A bugle call cut the silence. The 
red door swung open and with a peculiar rolling gallop the 
bull dashed into the arena. 

“Now,” I thought, “this terrible bullfight, about which 
so much has been written, so much discussed, has indeed 
begun. 9 ’ 

The bullfights of our imagination are spectacles of sun 
and colour—of madness stained with cruelty; the cruelty 
perhaps partly condoned by the fierceness of the bull, by a 
sort of wild frenzy of sport which seems in some part to 
excuse the murderous instinct of man. 

The bull, a coloured rosette nailed to its shoulder, reached 
the centre of the ring, and then, for me, half the anticipated 
interest of the fight vanished. We had expected a wild and 
furious gallop around the arena; a bull lusting to kill or be 


98 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


killed; mad charges at the toreros, who would elude it with 
quick baffling passes of the cloaks, wild dashes at the unfor¬ 
tunate horses, the riders of which would at least make 
some pretence of manoeuvring before the furious hull was 
allowed to fling horse and rider into the air. But no! The 
bull slowed up, halted and looked to this side and that. It 
was obviously perplexed. One could almost imagine a 
crease of puzzlement between its eyes. What was all this; 
where the sierras of its youth; into what strange place had 
it come? AM now began a taunting of the unwilling 
bull. The toreros flapped their faded cloaks at it, but when¬ 
ever the bull was tempted to charge the man ran for safety 



and crammed himself through one of the bolt-holes in the 
palisade—once a torero scampering for life reached an 
opening at the same instant as a companion. For a mo¬ 
ment there was a flurry, but both men contrived to push 
through before the bull was able to reach them. The first 
impression of the fight was of a certain power and some 
magnificence on the part of the bull, and of degradation on 
the part of the toreros—one thought of the shorn Samson 
taunted by the Philistines. In this contest the men seemed 
somehow ignoble in comparison with the animals. The 
next act of the drama made this feeling no better. The 
picador was led out on his blindfolded and skeleton-like 
steed by a little man in a red shirt, who from behind the 


MURCIA—BRAVO TORO 


99 


horse’s head held out, like a policeman regulating the traffic, 
a protesting hand at the bull, as if to imply that the animal 
was not to charge till he was ready to bolt. For some 
while the bull did not take the invitation, though when¬ 
ever he appeared likely to do so the small man dropped the 
reins and ran for the paling, from which, however, he took 
care never to be very far away. The picador himself is 
not in great danger, for his trousers are armour plated. 

By this time the audience was shouting out: “No 
quiere!” 1 but at last the bull charged, the picador thrust 
his lance, and the bull with a great thrust of its head over¬ 
turned both horse and man. Immediately the bull was sur¬ 
rounded by the toreros who with flapping cloaks distracted 
its attention. Man and horse were lifted up again. 

Large numbers of Spaniards do not like bullfighting, but 
a great many Spaniards who do not in principle object to 
bullfighting do object to the horse-slaughter. One, cutting 
to the roots of the truth, said it was “not aesthetic.” He 
was right. There should be a strong sense of the aesthetic 
in sport—it is a thing more subtle than mere “fair play,” 
and when this sense of the aesthetic is ignored the sport be¬ 
comes brutality. This horse-slaughter more than over¬ 
steps the line of the aesthetic, so for us did the bolt-holes 
provided for the toreros. For us bullfighting would begin 
to be a serious sport if the men and the bull stood on the 
same conditions. 

One picador, who by means of his lance kept the bull off 
from his horse, received a round of well-earned applause. 
The bugle sounded once more and the picadors were led out 
of the ring. There followed another rather dull interval of 
cloak-flapping. One of the matadors, however, gave an 
exhibition of passes which made the bull charge repeatedly 
within a foot or so of the man’s body, during which the 
torero did not move his feet. When the bull, baffled and 
panting with exhaustion at his fruitless tosses, paused, the 


i “He doesn’t want to fight.’ 


100 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


torero went upon one knee before the animal. The specta¬ 
tors shrieked applause and flung their hats into the ring. 
But this exhibition was very different from the usual cloak¬ 
flapping followed by a scamper for the bolt-hole: nor, in¬ 
deed, was it shown often. 

A torero who had carried an exceedingly faded violet 
cloak, and who had been perhaps most hasty in his dashes 
for the safety gaps, now discarded his cloak, and waving a 
pair of pink banderillas stepped into the centre of the ring. 
Like a foreigner at cricket we naturally missed much of 



the subtlety, but it was obvious that there were certain 
conditions under which the banderillero would meet the 
bull and others under which he would not. When the to¬ 
reador seemed to think the bull in a good position, he waved 
his banderillas and stamped his feet as though about to 
fence. But the bull did not want banderillas stuck into 
him. Again and again he declined the invitation while the 
populace howled “No quiere, no quiere!” Personally I 
should have sent the bull home and ordered another with 
more ginger in it. At last, exasperated, the bull charged, 








MURCIA—BRAVO TORO 


101 


the banderillero ran towards it in a slightly circular path, 
planted his two sticks, each some thirty inches long, into 
the bull’s neck, and, curving out more widely, avoided by 
a few inches the upward thrust of the hull’s horns. This 
piece of work looked dangerous, and the pay of a banderil¬ 
lero amounts to between £3 and £4 an afternoon. I think 
that he earns his money. What surprised us was to see 
the torero who had appeared such a scamperer with the 
faded purple cloak performing most pluckily with the 
paper-covered sticks. I suppose it is the case of a good bats¬ 
man and good bowler—the arts are not interchangeable. 

The six banderillas having been placed, another interval 
of harrying the unfortunate animal with minor exaspera¬ 
tions of cloak-flapping followed: but at last the espatero, 
the swordsman, and the matador prepared to give the death 
stroke. Here again in first-class bullfighting probably the 
whole exhibition is one of supreme skill. We expected a 
certain number of showy passes with the scarlet flag, the 
matador keeping the bull circling about him—“wearing the 
bull as a waist-belt,” as the saying is in Spain. Then a 
pause, a sudden thrust with the sword—and, with a groan, 
the bull is dead. It was not so. The espatero walked 
about flapping the cloak, at which sometimes the bull did 
charge, but more often did not. Several times the espatero 
had to run into a bolt-hole. The bull showed strong de¬ 
sires to go home: it went to the side of the ring and looked 
at the door from whence it had emerged, while more ven¬ 
turesome members of the audience leaned over the palisade 
and tried to snatch out a banderilla as a souvenir. The 
toreador chivied the bull round the ring, trying to get it 
face foremost. However, when he succeeded in this he did 
not seem satisfied, for though the people yelled: “Ahora! 
Ahora!” 1 the matador only flapped his cloak. 

“He is rather a nervous espatero,” said Luis, “so, when 
he does prepare to kill, look out. Sometimes the sword flies. 


a “Now! Now! : 



102 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Not very long ago it landed in the audience and killed a 
spectator. ’ ’ At last, however, the bull, tongue hanging out, 
foam dripping from its mouth, blood streaming from the 
lance and banderilla wounds in the shoulders, faced the 
matador with half lowered and sullen head. The matador, 
taking up the position of a man about to throw a javelin, 
aimed his sword, which was curiously curved in the blade, 
and with quick steps ran in, thrust, and side-stepped. The 
bull, taken by surprise, could not bring its weight into 
action rapidly enough, the upward tossing horns missed 
the man by inches: the bull rushed forward at another 
torero who had taken position in line to attract the animal’s 



attention. The matador had made no master stroke, the 
sword stood eighteen inches out of the bull’s shoulder. The 
bull showed no signs of death, so the matador went away to 
procure another sword. Finally the bull, stabbed by four 
swords, was worried to death rather than killed, after which 
the corpse was dragged triumphantly around the ring at the 
tail of the team of horses, while the spectators stood on the 
stone seats and cheered. 

It may be that we English take our pleasures sadly, but 
at that moment it struck me that at an ordinary bullfight 
the Spaniard seems to take rather dull pleasures with 
ecstasy. 


MURCIA—BRAVO TORO 


103 


The second bull proved more lively, the second matador 
more expert, or more lucky than his confrere; but here also 
the show seemed to partake rather of the nature of what 
should properly be termed bullbaiting than bullfighting. 
This second bull provided the thrill of the day to the three 
small dirty children. With one thrust of its horn it killed 
a horse. The small hoy (aged six or seven) turned to me 
with eyes sparkling with pleasure. 

“Did you see that?” he exclaimed. “One thrust only.” 

After the death of this hull came the Interval. 

“Look up the numbers printed on your tickets,” said 
Luis. 

Having found the papers, I raised my head and to my 
amazement saw, in the centre of the arena, a donkey, two 
young calves and a sewing-machine. 

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What are those?” 

“They are the prizes of the tombola,” explained Luis; 
“you or the Senor may win one.” 

The lots were drawn out of a large hat-box, and the 
numbers displayed on a blackboard. The donkey fell to a 
small boy, the calves to a peasant. But for some while the 
sewing-machine, forlorn and incongruous, stood in the 
centre of the bloodthirsty arena awaiting a claimant. At¬ 
tention was finally concentrated upon a point high up 
amongst the cheap seats, to the right of the President’s 
box. Shouting, persuasion, hand-clapping and arm-wav¬ 
ing ensued, and at last the crowd squeezed out a small, dark 
woman, blushing and giggling behind her fan, accompanied 
by husband, husband’s friend and six-year-old son. The 
sewing-machine was escorted out of the same door through 
which the dead bulls had been dragged. 

Then the bullfight began again. The third bull, a lusty 
black, was the most willing of all. He did charge, he leapt 
high in his endeavours to kill those phantom cloaks. After 
all the necessary banderillas had been placed, there followed 
an incident. A boy of about sixteen years leapt the barrier 


104 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


and ran across the ring, hastily as he ran unwrapping 
something from a covering of newspaper. There was a 
sudden hum of excited voices from the spectators. 

1 * Ei! ’ ’ cried Luis. ‘ ‘ An amateur! ’ ’ 

The boy reached the President’s box, the unwrapped 
objects being a pair of dirty banderillas. Bowing to the 
President he craved permission to plant his banderillas in 
the bull. But, alas for youthful aspirations, permission 
was not given. The boy clambered sadly over the palisade 
to hide himself in the audience. 

Unfortunately this bull, the bravest of the four, fell to 
the lot of the nervous matador. Death was a very lengthy 
operation, during the progress of which the bull knocked 
down the bullfighter. For a moment we wondered if the 
bull were going to take its revenge, but flapping cloaks in¬ 
stantly distracted it. Meanwhile, between the forelegs of 
the bull the matador lay very still, shielding his head with 
his arms. The nervous matador, however, went on with 
his task, using three swords before it was completed. 

The matador of the fourth bull made an exceedingly bad 
thrust. The populace howled insults at him, flinging at the 
same time those paper bags which we had seen on sale near 
the ticket-office. They contained no refreshment, nor ma¬ 
terial for bombarding unsuccessful matadors, but were 
stuffed with horsehair to soften the stone seats. By this 
time we wished we had inquired more about them, for the 
stone had proved anything but soft The fourth bull dead, 
the bullfight was over. 

“Come and see the toreros,” said Luis. 

So with the outflowing press we repassed into the culvert, 
down the stairs and along the corridors of brick, till we 
reached a window or grille, by staring through which we 
could see the “heroes of Spain” clambering into an or¬ 
dinary station bus, in which they sat, stiff, cramped, digni¬ 
fied and unsmiling, conscious of their importance. 

We returned with the returning crowds along the roads 
deep in dust, back to the centre of the town where there 


MUECIA—BEAVO TOEO 


105 


were cooling drinks and seats softer than those stone 
benches. While we were sitting thus, revelling in varied 
positions and summing up our first impressions, a large 
box cart of lattice work passed by. Within the cart were 
hung great joints of meat which swung to and fro as the 
cart bumped over the uneven road. 

“There,” said Luis, “go the bulls. They will be sold 
to-morrow in the market. The meat is cheap because it is 
rather tough.” 

This incident, because it seemed to contain a note of 
irony, because it had in it something sardonic and some¬ 
thing callous, seemed to us a fitting termination to the 
spectacle which we had witnessed. 


CHAPTER XIII 


AN EXCURSION 

M URCIA was very hot, very dusty and very sultry. 
We did not mind mere heat—though Spanish mid¬ 
summer heat was not the best of pick-me-ups for 
the influenza—dust we could outlive, but the sultriness of 
the Murcian valley was beyond our physique. This flat 
vailey, which is ten miles wide between abrupt mountains, 
is irrigated over the whole of its breadth and is one of the 
richest agricultural parts of Spain. The evaporation of 
the water makes the heat of Murcia damp; the summer in 
addition was cloudy, and the sun shining on to the clouds 
seemed to cook the air enclosed in the valley until the at¬ 
mosphere resembled that of a glass-house for orchids. 
We wished to leave Murcia in spite of an affection which 
was growing in us for the town. 

Luis met us at one o’clock on the terrace of the Reina 
Victoria. We had cafe au lait while waiting for the tartana. 
Luis said that the milk in the coffee was not good: he de¬ 
duced preservatives. But the lean waiter stood loyally by 
his hotel. 

“The milk is excellent, I assure you, Senor,” he said. 
“My stomach is excessively delicate; the slightest thing and 
it is ... I assure you that I drink pints of this milk in 
this hotel. In fact my stomach is so delicado that I am ^ 
connoisseur in milk, es vero . 1 If the milk were bad this 
fatality would happen to me.” 

He gave a dumb-crambo exhibition of the results of bad 
milk on his delicate digestion; it needed no words. 


i That is truth. 


106 



AN EXCURSION 


107 


With deference he then proposed a new cafe au lait, 
which Luis sipped with a judicial but unconvinced manner. 

The tartana was a tight fit. It is about as large as a 
governess-cart inside, and we were six. Luis, Jan and 
myself, a monk in brown, a thin pale Senor who had long 
eyelashes and many rings, and another passenger, a world 
type, the result of overwork and underpay, neither smart 
nor slovenly, with a rough manner covering a kindly na¬ 
ture. 



We discovered why tartanas have bulging hoods. The 
vehicles roll and rock so much over the bad roads that it is 
necessary to make room for the passengers’ heads to jerk 
backwards. Otherwise cerebral concussion would he the 
invariable result. 

Luis (to the little monk): “Excuse me, hut are not your 
clothes very hot?” 

The Monk (spreading out his hands): “They are hot, but 
nevertheless they keep out the sun.” 


108 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


We come out of the town into the gardens. There are 
flat fields of cultivation spotted with mulberry trees, the 
trunks of which seem vivid purple in the afternoon light. 

I make a remark in Spanish. (Jan was still at the stage 
of appreciative listener). 

The Clerkly Man: “Senora, your Spanish is good for a 
stranger—you can pronounce the Spanish J, which is dif¬ 
ficult for foreigners. ” 

I: “I have learned that from speaking German; it is 
rather like the German cA” 

A discussion on idioms at once begins. The Spaniard, 
though he speaks foreign languages badly, has an inex¬ 
tinguishable interest in the subject of tongues. If ever you 
are bored in Spanish company start an argument about 
languages. After the discussion has been going on for 
some while the pale Senor says: 

“Nevertheless it is said that the Catalans wish to root 
Castilian out of their country.” 

Luis (with some heat): “Well! why should they not? 
They are the hardest working and the most valuable people 
of Spain. Why should not they do as they like? Why 
should everybody not do as he likes if he hurts nobody 
else?” 

The pale Senor (with frigidity): “But that is Bolshe¬ 
vism. ’ ’ 

Luis (with increasing heat): “If that is Bolshevism then 
I do not mind being a Bolshevik.” 

Conversation is at an impasse. The carriage flings us to 
and fro for a while. 

A motor-car passes us. The dust which is about six 
inches deep on the road is whirled up in a cloud so thick 
that we have to halt for a few minutes to allow it to settle, 
or we might have driven into the deep water-channels which 
edge each side of the road. 

Luis (to the Clerkly Man): “My friends want to live for 
a while out in the mountains. Do you by any chance know 
of a house?” 


AN EXCURSION 


109 


The Clerkly Man: “I am living with my family in the 
monastery of Fuen Santa. There is a guest house there 
and habitations are to let. I will find out all about them 
if you wish. ’ ’ 

The pale little Sehor (who has apparently forgotten all 
about Bolshevism): “There are one or two houses in my 
village of Verdolay. The proprietor is a friend of mine. 
I will inquire for you about it.” 

The tartana stops. 

In front of a solitary house is a small wooden frame on 
which a few strips of dusty meat are hung. The driver 
buys some of this from the woman who comes out of 
the house. 

The Driver (confidentially to the passengers): “Better 
get a bit of meat while you have the chance.” 

Nobody follows his example. The carriage bumps on. 

The sun is now shining through the thin dust-laden trees 
which edge the road: they appear as flames of pale gold. 

We mount over a bridge. A broad, deep, but waterless 
canal stretches away to right and left. 

The little Sehor: “We are now nearing Verdolay. It is 
still too hot for you to go hunting for a house. I shall be 
delighted if you will take possession of my house until the 
sun is cooler.” 

Luis: “Senor, I thank you very much, but we cannot 
do it.” 

The little Sehor: “I insist—you will come?” 

Luis: “Thank you very much.” 

This is Spanish courtesy. A single invitation is for 
politeness only, like the last piece of bread and butter left 
for Miss Manners. A second invitation means that it is 
really offered. 

We pass a group of houses the colour of baked bread; 
the most arid-looking spot we have seen as yet. The gar¬ 
dens come to an abrupt end. The road rises slightly, and 
grey-green olive foliage over gnarled trunks throw a thin 
lacework of shadow on the dry earth. 


110 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


The tartana stops. 

We all get out. 

The clerkly man goes east; the priest south; we, led by 
the pale Senor, west. 

We were at the entrance of a village. It spread over a 
mound at the foot of the higher hills. It was like a pyramid 
with toy houses coloured yellow, orange, green and grey 
upon the ledges, and all around trees like those from a 
child’s play box. The village was fronted by a line of 
houses painted a deep crimson-vermilion. An iron wind¬ 
mill for pumping water was placed on the extreme point of 
the mound. 

The little Senor showed us through the village to his 
house and left us in the entrada, while he went to get beer. 
The room was decorated with wooden “art-nouveau” 
chairs, oleographs and an extremely bad oil painting of a 
bull with banderillas shedding much blood. On a cane 
table was a gramophone. 

The little Senor had shut a door made on the system of a 
Venetian blind to keep out the sun, and presently the lat¬ 
ticework was crowded with children trying to peer in at 
us. 

The Senor returned preceded by a large English setter. 
He drew the corks of the beer and asked us to make our¬ 
selves at home. 

“The house and all that is in it is at your service,” he 
said in the phrase of Spanish courtesy. 

I was patting the dog. 

“That dog,” said the little Senor, “is a very valuable 
dog. It is unique in the province and possibly is unique 
in the south of Spain. It has a romantic history. It is 
bred by the monks in high Switzerland, and when the snow 
is deep on the mountains it goes out to hunt for lost travel¬ 
lers. It is the only specimen of a San Bernar’ in the 
south of Spain.” 


AN EXCURSION 


111 


We looked at the setter; and drank some more beer. 

“That bull,” went on the Senor, pointing to the picture, 
“was painted by one of the best bull painters in Spain.” 

We looked at the picture and again took refuge in beer. 
Luis, who did not know about setters, but did know about 
pictures, drank in sympathy. 

The Senor wound up his gramophone. 

“Do you know ‘Frou-Frou’?” he inquired. 

“ ‘Frou-Frou’?” we said. 

“Yes, the French Comic Opera.” 

“But,” said Luis, “have you not by chance a disc of 
Spanish music? You see,” he added as excuse, “the Senors 
are foreign. It interests them to hear the national music, 
the Flamenco.” 

The little Senor pursed his lips. 

“But,” he said, “it is so vulgar. Nobody wants to hear 
that.” 

He possessed, however, a disc or two which he turned on, 
to our delight. But before we left him he insisted that we 
should sit through his favourite “Frou-Frou.” 

We went away. The strains of “Frou-Frou” which the 
little Senor had turned on once more followed us on the 
still air. The setter-St. Bernard walked with us to the be¬ 
ginning of the hill, from whence he turned sedately home¬ 
wards. 

We strode upwards—past cottages of all colours, past a 
large rambling monastery, which, perched on the far side 
of the Verdolay hill, very cubic in shape, is as romantic as 
it is possible for a building to be; past a watercourse, above 
which were dwellings hollowed out of the soft rock of the 
mountain-side, cave dwellings, and out on to the side of the 
mountains lying between Murcia and Cartagena. From 
here we could appreciate the width, flatness and verdure 
of the Murcian valley in the midst of which was the town, 
the campanile of the cathedral soaring into the air. 

Here we had our first experience of a Spanish country 


112 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


walk. We were all wearing alpagatas, the canvas sides of 
which are not exceedingly thick. The dried herbage of the 
hills was intermingled with all manner of prickly weeds. 
The vegetation protects itself in this way from being eaten 
by anything less leather-tongued than a goat. The results 
are uncomfortable for the walker. The little hairlike spines 
pierce the shoes and break off, remaining as a continual 
irritant until the shoe is removed. Even then the spines, 
almost microscopic in size and almost flesh colour, are 
often difficult to find. The same uncomfortable fate is in 
wait for the unwary stranger who sits down without having 
carefully explored the place where he is going to seat him¬ 
self. Indeed the fate is worse, because the thorns thus 
encountered cannot with decency be extracted in a public 
place and the victim is condemned to a lot similar to that 
of the naughty schoolboy. 

The sun poured the full of its summer power on to the 
hill-side, which reflected both heat and light with over¬ 
powering intensity. Though it was almost four o’clock 
in the afternoon we felt that our salamandrine limits were 
being put to a test. A broad white road, mounting up the 
hill, crossed our path and we turned into it. 

“We are going to the monastery of La Luz,” said Luis. 
“I have heard that they sometimes take visitors for short 
periods. It would be interesting for you to spend a fort¬ 
night in a monastery.” 

The road climbed up beneath high black cliffs. The other 
side of the valley was coloured orange and red upon which 
the sun was shining with all its force. The side of the hill 
was dotted with aloes, some having upright flower stems 
fifteen feet high in the* air, around the flowers of which 
the bees were swarming in harmonious halos. A stately 
stone pine overshadowed a medley of old buildings which 
sprang from the top of a precipice out of which sprouted 
the weird branches of the prickly pear cactus. The road 
circled round the foot of this cliff, and still mounted till, 
making a full semi-circle, it brought us on to a platform. 


AN EXCURSION 


113 


On one side of the flat space was an open cistern into which 
led a pipe. From the pipe a deliberate trickle of water 
fell. Two women and two men sat about this pipe slowly 
filling their amphoras of Grecian form, while donkeys 
waited patiently in the background bearing panniers for 
the water-vessels on their backs. On the other side of 
the platform the monastery showed a high wall with a 



large gate leading into a courtyard from which arose the 
face of the church, painted a Cambridge blue. 

We could find no bell. The water-carriers shouted in¬ 
structions to us. The bell clanged with an empty sound, 
as though echoing through miles of untenanted corridors. 
We rang again. No response. We rang three or four 
times before we heard the sound of shuffling steps. A 
peep-hole, shaped like a cross, opened and an eye examined 








114 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


us. The door swung slowly open, revealing a small 
obsequious man dressed in peasant costume. Through pas¬ 
sages we came into a cloister which was built around a 
small courtyard full of flowers. In the middle of the court¬ 
yard was a high statue of the Virgin. It was framed and 
almost hidden by a creeper which offered to it a tribute of 
gorgeous purple bell-shaped flowers. At the foot of the 
figure was stretched a large cat. A strange thought came 
to me that the cat did not bother itself about the Virgin 
other than as something which threw a grateful shadow. 

The apologetic little peasant monk who had let us in was 
evidently an underling. He murmured something about 
Brother Juan and went away. 

Brother Juan came groaning along the corridor with 
rheumatic steps. He had a tiny head and large-framed 
body; dressed in peasant’s clothes, white shirt, black cum¬ 
merbund, short knee trousers, long white drawers to the 
ankle and sandals on bare feet. He was rather like a dear 
old gardener who has been in the family for years, and who 
has supported the teasings of generations of children. 
Age and a sweet nature had carved his face with horizontal 
wrinkles of kindliness; rheumatism and pain had crossed 
these with downward seams of depression. 

Luis introduced the object of our visit. Brother Juan 
doubtingly shook his head. They did have visitors, yes, 
but those were always well-known to the monastery. Intro¬ 
ductions would be necessary. But, in any circumstance, 
the Father Superior was in Murcia at the moment, and 
nothing could be done without him. 

I, made conceited by the praise of the clerkly man in the 
carriage, then tried to charm Brother Juan by a series of 
apposite remarks in my most careful Spanish. 

Brother Juan scratched his head. 

“Doubtless, what the Senora says is very interesting.” 
He raised his hands and eyes in pantomimed dismay. ‘ ‘ But, 
oh, these languages! I can’t understand a word!” 


AN EXCURSION 


115 


Brother Juan, groaning with rheumatism, led us to the 
gate. By some means an old woman dressed in black had 
joined us. As Juan was taking his leave of us his eyes 
suddenly lit up with a merry twinkle. 

“If you will excuse me,” he said to Luis, “it would be 
better, when you see the Father Superior, if the woman 
would dress rather less indecently. You see, we are monks 
and are not used to it.” 

We went down the hill accompanied by the old woman 
in black, who was chuckling at Brother Juan’s last remark. 

“If only the woman would ... he ... he ... we are 
monks and aren’t used to it ... ho . . . ho.” 

I was surprised. It had not seemed to me that I was 
indecent. I was wearing an ordinary English midsummer 
walking dress. Luis said: 

“I think it was the opening at your neck that worried 
him. You see we haven’t really taken up the open neck in 
Murcia as yet.” 

Directed by the old woman, we scrambled down steep 
paths to the bottom of the orange-coloured ravine, and up 
the other side past the aloes; we went through an olive 
grove, and again up a steep zigzag road to the second mon¬ 
astery. Here lived the clerkly man, but we did not know 
his name. This monastery began with a terra-cotta-col- 
oured Gothic church with three tall towers and a cupola of 
blue glazed tiles, and rambled on up the ridge of a long 
hill to end in a tall building which looked like an overgrown 
Turkish bath. A grey building with a huge entrance door 
was pointed out as the pension of the monastery. We wan¬ 
dered into a large courtyard and to us came a fat priest 
wearing a biretta. He was courteous but firm. 

“We have no room,” he said. 

But we remembered that the clerkly one had said that 
there was room. I suppose again my dress was the real 
objection. 

We went back towards the village of the little Senor. 


116 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


On our way we again crossed the dusty road which led to 
La Luz. A carriage was driving along it. In the carriage 
were two priests. Luis said: 

“There probably goes the Father Superior. Shall we 
ask him now?” 

After a moment’s hesitation we turned and strode up the 
hill. We had to walk fast to catch the carriage, but at last 
the driver, perceiving that we were following him, halted. 

“No,” said one of the priests, “we are not the Superior 
of La Luz. Indeed, at this moment he is behind you. 
There.” 

He pointed out an old man in the costume of a peasant, 
who, bent with age, was toiling up the hill aided by his staff. 
The Father Superior was still some distance away. 
Hastily, with a brooch, we pinned my blouse up close around 
my throat. 

The Father Superior had the face of one designed to be 
an ascetic, but his expression was inscrutable. He was 
very suave. He felt honoured, he said, by the request of 
the Senor s, but there was no room. Now Brother Juan 
had said that there was room. 

Luis tried to urge the matter: he instanced our Red Cross 
work in Serbia. The Father Superior said it was very 
praiseworthy of us, but . . . and bowing unfelt regrets he 
left us. 

We went back to our little Senor. 

He found for us a woman with the usual pound’s weight 
of keys and conducted us to two bright red houses. Both 
were one story in height, but one was for three months’ 
tenancy only. We decided to take the other. It was oc¬ 
cupied to its limits by a Spanish family, so we took but the 
most cursory of glances into it. Then, our business settled, 
we said au revoir to the little Senor, who in Spanish fashion 
offered us his services whenever they should be needed. 

We walked down a road and, in a short while, came to 
the village of Alverca. This was the first typical Spanish 
village we had passed through. It was long, stretched on 


AN EXCURSION 


117 


the edge between the bare mountain and the fertile valley. 
The houses were low, one-storied for the most part, and the 
dust was all-prevalent. In the dusty street boys were 
playing football, which in Spain seems to be a summer 
game. In the middle of the village was a shop, which ad¬ 
vertised itself as a Tobacco Agency, for tobacco is a Spanish 
government monopoly and can be sold only in licensed 
places. We went in to get a drink and to ask if by chance 
they had some tobacco, for all the while we were in Spain 
there was a famine of tobacco. 

The inside of the shop was a curious mixture of the 
modern and of the very ancient. At one end of the counter 
was a modern brass beer machine, with carbonic acid gas 
cylinder—which gives to the tepid beer an extra fizz— 
pressure gauge and lead-lined sink. At the other end of 
the shop were huge jars four feet high, and nine or ten 
feet in circumference; amphoras of pale porous unglazed 
pottery, direct successors of the Grecian vase; small drink¬ 
ing pots of clay with short spouts for water or of glass 
with long spouts for wine, the latter in shape not unlike 
the brass drinking-vessels of Benares. Pendent from the 
ceiling hung candles two or three feet in length, for devo¬ 
tional purposes, and side by side with the candles were 
festooned strings of orange-coloured, highly flavoured 
sausages, which appeared very ominous. Some day one 
felt that one would be tempted by a Spanish friend to eat 
one of these sausages, and the fear of the experiment was 
always within us. Wine of a deep ruby tinged with brown 
filled a large glass barrel; wine which could be bought for 
one halfpenny a glass. 

Inside the shop, leaning against the zinc bar, were two 
tramps; the one swart with three days’ beard on his chin, 
dressed in a blue jean smock and soiled yellow velveteen 
trousers; the other leaner, more pallid, furtive: in spite of 
the heat of the day he was covered with a large black 
cloak. 

They at once offered us their glasses of wine. 


118 TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 

“Gracias. Buen aproveche,” said we in customary 
refusal. 

They offered cigarettes to Jan and Luis. These, by 
courtesy, had to be accepted. 

While we were drinking our tepid beer—fizzed up with 
the carbonic acid gas—Jan asked for and bought a box of 
matches. The Spanish matches, very bad, a government 
monopoly, are packed in a small cardboard box. This box 
is quite difficult to open. Whichever way you push it, like 
the well-known trick matchbox, the inside part seems to 
have two bottoms and no opening. The impatient traveller 
usually tears the box to pieces trying to get at the forty 
matches which are inside. 

Jan asked for tobacco. 

“There is not,” sighed the fat woman. 

Outside the shop the two tramps were waiting for us. 
The swart one peered quickly from left to right. 

“We have tobacco,” he said in a hoarse whisper. He 
snapped his fingers at his companion, who produced from 
beneath the cloak, furtively, a square orange packet. 

“Good tobacco from Gibraltar,” growled “Swart”; 
“will you buy?” 

“No,” said Luis. 

The pallid man slid the tobacco beneath the cloak again. 
The two slouched off through the dust. 

“That would be tobacco at each end and cabbage or other 
refuse in the middle, ’ ’ said Luis. 

We turned towards the setting sun. 

Murcia has a tramway system. Blue cars run all over 
the town and reach out into the country at several spots. 
We came to the terminus in this direction at Palma, on the 
road to Cartagena. The people of the village crowded 
about us in curiosity; but by this time we were becoming 
used to a publicity which is, as a rule, only reserved for 
Royalty. 

As the tram carried us home—with several halts due to 
failure of the electrical supply—we noticed through an open 


AN EXCURSION 


119 


door a delightful interior, decorated with the huge water- 
jars—on a raised step—with which beautiful specimens of 
old Spanish pottery were arranged. 

The village of the little Senor had pleased us so much that 
we made arrangements to move out there as soon as pos¬ 
sible; for the heat of Murcia was now unbearable and we 
were in consequence on the verge of being really ill. 


CHAPTER XIV 


VERDOLAY—HOUSEKEEPING 

T HE house in* Verdolay had five large rooms, stone- 
floored, and was unfurnished. We decided to bor¬ 
row all our friend’s kitchen furniture, to wit, a 
table, three chairs, water-vessels, etc., and we bought for 
ourselves a large frying-pan. But the bed was a problem. 
Our friend’s bed looked too good to knock about, so at last 
we determined on the planks which we had already, and 
four packing-cases on which to lay the planks. Antonio, 
always eager to help us, promised to find the packing-cases 
and to make all the arrangements about a cart. At this 
moment Antonio’s wife Rosa was ill. He had invited us 
to a noble lunch, and upon the day following he had told 
us that the lunch had disagreed seriously with Rosa. She 
did not get better. “There is much fever with it,” said 
Antonio. Marciana,,our charwoman, of whom we will tell 
more later, was also working for Antonio, and would bring 
us news of Rosa’s illness, which appeared quite serious for 
so slight a cause. 

“We must look out for tummy-troubles,” said I. 

It is amazing what a lot of small amount of furniture 
appears when one is preparing to move. We had thought 
the cart much too'big, but we had some difficulty in stacking 
into it all our material, including the guitar, of which the 
driver was told to take especial care. 

We drove out to Verdolay in a tartana, passing on the 
road our cart of furniture. We noted that the driver had 
added above our load two huge bundles of straw colour. 
We wondered what they might be. We were to discover 
later. 


120 


VERDOLAY—HOUSEKEEPING 


121 


The little Senor took us to the owner of our prospective 
abode. His house was full of children, and the study, 
where we signed a Spanish agreement, was festooned with 
swords, pistols and guns, while a large photograph of him 
in officer’s uniform explained the meaning of this warlike 
equipment. The proprietor, Don Ferdinand—a most un¬ 
military looking man—received our money with aloof dig¬ 
nity; but said, after the transaction was over, that if we 
ever needed a friend we now knew where to look for him. 
Subsequently Don Ferdinand placed in the yard next to 
ours a large dog, which howled all night and prevented 
us from sleeping, but the friendliness which he had pro¬ 
fessed did not induce him to move it. 

The cart of furniture had not arrived by the time we 
were in full possession of our new home. The front door 
led into a large entrada, from which one passed into an 
equally spacious kitchen, and then by a wide double door 
into the back yard. To the right and left of the entrada 
were rooms with windows, covered with a grille, looking 
on to the road. To the right of the kitchen the last room 
had a window looking into the yard. 

Evening had come and still the cart delayed. Antonio 
had given us an introduction to a friend called “La 
Merchora.” We found her in the village shop which she 
owned. Her shop was smaller than that in Alverca, but 
similar, save that she sold her beer in bottles and dis¬ 
pensed with the beer machine. The same bilious-looking 
sausage hung in festoons from the ceiling. She was like 
a fat, happy aunt to us, talked very fast, but was very 
proud of being able to understand what I said. She 
assured us that she would arrange things for us. 

In the dusk we sat on the step of our empty house, and, 
illuminated by the light of a couple of candles lent by the 
little Senor, we ate provisions which we providentially had 
brought with us in the tartana. The cart arrived at about 
eight o’clock. The two large bundles had disappeared, 
but a certain amount of chopped straw scattered about 


122 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


amongst the furniture showed us what they had contained. 
The driver hesitated before accepting the tip which Jan 
offered him. 

We set up the bed as best we could. We had intended 
to put the packing-cases upright, but the structure seemed 
rather unsafe; so we laid them flat, put two of the planks 
lengthways and the rest crossing. Unfortunately two of 
the packing-cases were much narrower than the others. 
This made the structure slope down about a foot at one 
end. We did not have time or surplus energy to alter 
this arrangement during our stay, with the result that in 
the morning we had as a rule slipped gently down so that 
our feet projected some distance beyond the end of the 
bed. Mosquitoes had threatened us during our meal, so 
that we rigged the net at once. 

We had been warned by many travellers of the verminous 
condition of Spain. We had taken the chances of this 
house, which in truth had appeared reasonably clean. 
Nevertheless we went to bed with some anxiety. No sooner 
had we lain down and the candle was out, than the trouble 
began. It was as though we had been invaded by a hun¬ 
dred thousand bugs. We both tossed about and cursed our 
luck. Suddenly a piercing and prolonged sting made me 
clap my hand suddenly to the spot attacked. I had im¬ 
prisoned something. I had experienced bugs in Serbia: 
this did not seem like a bug, but much larger. 

“Jan,” I exclaimed, “I’ve caught something. Strike a 
light.” The match revealed a short piece of chopped 
straw. The carter, with his bundles of chaff, had provided 
us with as uncomfortable a specimen of an “apple-pie” 
bed as it has been my lot to experience. The chaff had 
sifted down through everything, and had impregnated both 
the cover of the mattress and the sheets with the fine spikes 
of straw. We spent the better part of the night picking 
the tiny irritants out of our bedding. Even the thought 
that the house had proved bugless was at that moment but 
a poor solace. In addition to our discomforts of that night, 


VERDOLAY—HOUSEKEEPING 


123 


the house was almost unbearable from the heat. We had 
chosen our first residence with some lack of experience. 
The house, we discovered on the morrow, faced east and 
west, and not, as did the majority of the houses in the vil¬ 
lage, north and south. In consequence of this fact we 
suffered from the sun, which poured through the front door 
all the morning, and through the back door all the after¬ 
noon. It was almost impossible to open the windows on 
both sides, to allow a draught to pass through the house. 
And for the worst house in the village we were being 
charged forty pesetas a month by our friend, Don 
Ferdinand. 

The discomforts of the night were added to by the cats, 
which chose our back wall for the most awesome serenades 
we have ever heard; and also by the plantive baaing of 
a sheep tethered in an adjoining yard. We fell into an 
uneasy sleep about dawn, but were soon awakened by 
strange sounds which came from the kitchen. We listened, 
but could make nothing of them; they were strange hollow 
vocal sounds as though a small carpet was being beaten 
at irregular intervals. The front door was locked, the 
front windows barred; what had come in must have done 
so by the back, over the wall. What was it? Jan peeped 
through a crack of the door. On the kitchen floor was a 
flock of pigeons, which had come in to search the chaff, 
scattered by the previous night’s unpacking, for grains 
of corn. 

It was now about 5.30. We decided to rest for a while, 
in view of the failure of our sleep. A rousing thump, 
thump on the front door drew Jan once more from bed. 

At the door was a brown-faced peasant, clad in black 
cotton, with bare sandalled feet. Spotted about the street 
were goats, their distended udders almost trailing on the 
ground. 

“Milk,” said the peasant. “Do you want milk? La 
Merchora sent me.” 

He took our milk-jug, selected a goat the udder of which 


124 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


seemed stretched almost to bursting, and milked the animal 
directly into the jug. He handed the jug of milk, hot and 
frothy, with a flourish. 

“Three fat dogs and a little bitch,” said he. 

In such a hot country the milk keeps better inside the 
animal than outside. Milk shops in Spain therefore are 



usually quadruped, and there is never a question of 
inspector or of adulteration. 

We made up our minds to get up. We did not know 
what other venders La Merchora had prepared for us. 
We had scarcely finished our breakfast of tea, bread and 





VERDOLAY—HOUSEKEEPING 


125 


chocolate, when another thump, thump on the door an¬ 
nounced the arrival of another ascetically faced peasant, 
tall, clad in blue. With him was a pretty girl of about 
fifteen and a dusty, tilted donkey-cart. 

“Vegetables and fruit,” said the girl. 

The man, having firmly fixed in his head that we knew 
no Spanish, grunted and made noises, strange though 
cheery, in his throat. The inside of the cart was piled with 
all manner of excellent things—tomatoes, green and yellow 
melons, berenginas, peaches, plums, pears, red peppers, 
cucumbers, potatoes, huge purple onions, and lemons. 

We bought many things. The system of weights and 
measures is supposed to be that of the kilogramme, as it 
is in France, but the methods by which these weights are 
translated into practice in Spain is delightful. Evidently 
there is no inspection of weights and measures. One of 
the weights used by the tall man was a small axe-head, 
another was a lump of rock. 

After the donkey-cart, a man stumpy enough to be 
almost a dwarf rode up to our steps. He was grim-visaged 
and paunchy; and said in a sour voice that he would fetch 
us water if we so wished. The price was one peseta a 
donkey-load, a donkey-load of water being four full Gre¬ 
cian vases (called cantaros) which were carried in panniers, 
on the top of which the old man sat and looked grumpily at 
the world, while the water gurgled and clucked cheerfully 
beneath him. 

Then came a witch-faced woman with a disagreeable 
voice. She carried a huge basket and said she was the 
shopping woman of Verdolay. Verdolay had no market, 
nor could one buy there anything other than the few imme¬ 
diate necessities which La Merchora sold. This woman 
was equivalent to our country carriers. She walked to 
Murcia every day and returned with laden basket through 
the heated dust. For this work she demanded a small per¬ 
centage upon the value of her purchases; probably she also 
extracted a small commission from the shops in which she 


126 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


dealt. We did not employ her much, as her temperament 
was not agreeable to us. 

Last of all came a little old woman—with a face seamed 
like a kindly walnut—dragging an old grey donkey. On the 
donkey’s back was a pair of time-worn panniers from which 
bulged a medley of fruit and vegetables. She was the 
donkey-cart’s rival. I had forgotten to buy onions. 

During our trip we had been bothered by the fact that 
at moments our uncertain Spanish would be displaced by 



Spanish sentence, quite against our wills Serbian would 
speak itself. This phenomenon is quite common, I believe, 
to those who learn several languages more or less im¬ 
perfectly. 

I now asked the old woman in unwished-for Serbian for 
onions. She struck an attitude of theatrical dismay. 

‘ ‘ Senora, ’ ’ she exclaimed, ‘ ‘ que es eso f ” 1 


1 “What is that ?’ 





VERDOLAY—HOUSEKEEPING 


127 


I repeated my desire, and again Serbian came out. The 
old lady shook her head, and seemed frightened. I got a 
strong hold over my tongue, and said slowly in Spanish: 

‘‘Tiene cebollas? ” 1 

The old lady’s face broke into a hundred wrinkles of 
delight. 

“Ahe, Senora,” she cried, “if you say ‘cebollas,’ I can 
understand that you want cebollas. But if you say some¬ 
thing different from ‘cebollas,’ how can I know that you 
need cebollas?” 

We walked round the corner to La Merchora’s to dis¬ 
cover w T hat could, and what could not, be bought at first 
hand. La Merchora could supply us with olive oil, but not 
with vinegar. She sold beer, wine, lemonade and soda- 
water in siphons; dried sardines, very smelly; orange- 
coloured sausages; bread at a peseta the kilo; Dutch cheese, 
red pepper, chocolate and eggs. The last-named item on 
the list she said was scarce and variable in quality. I then 
asked her if it would be possible to find a maid in the vil¬ 
lage. The little Senor had said that servants were as 
plentiful as flies in June, but La Merchora said that they 
were as scarce as were the eggs. All the girls went off to 
Murcia, she said. There were several women in the little 
shop and a discussion began; they reviewed a list of the 
likely girls. A young woman came in, and said at once 
that her sister was out of a job. She would send her along. 
La Merchora was reluctant to tell us the correct price to 
pay. I suppose she thought that she might be spoiling a 
beautiful piece of bargaining. Upon pressure, however, 
she admitted that the local price was about ten pesetas a 
month, this to include all the washing of linen, both house 
and personal. 

We bought some of La Merchora’s chocolate. She asked 
us if we would have Spanish or French flavouring. We 
naturally chose the Spanish variety. It was very cheap. 


i “Have you onions ?” 



128 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


It had a dusty consistency in the mouth, and tasted of 
chocolate not at all, but strongly of cinnamon. It was eat¬ 
able, but not exciting; we consoled ourselves with the re¬ 
flection that it was nourishing without temptations towards 
greediness and ate no other chocolate during our stay in 
Verdolay. Behind her shop La Merchora had a large 
yard, with outside stove for cooking. In the yard was a 
flock of turkeys and several pigs. A black and white terrier 
pup was having a game with the pigs, running about and 
pulling their tails with his sharp teeth. 

Our house had inconveniences. There was, as far as we 
could see, no place to put household refuse, nor any means 
in the village of collecting it. The windows on the road 
commanded a view almost of the whole house, and if we 
left them open at once the curious were at the grilles, 
staring through at us. As we could not open the back door 
or windows during the afternoon, this meant that if we 
wished for privacy we had to live in semi-gloom. Nobody 
in Spain, however, tries to live other than in public; the 
people walked in and watched us as we were having our 
meals; walked round the house examining with interest the 
pictures which we hung on the walls to dry; and in time we 
became case-hardened to this semi-public life. 

We had a siesta during the afternoon to make up for the 
sleep we had lost. At first we lay down without the 
mosquito-net, but the flies soon drove us to its protection. 
In the evening we called on the little Senor. He was a 
delicate and very likeable man, but his pretty wife showed 
a strong dislike for us, for which we could find no explana¬ 
tion save that perhaps she had been a pro-German during 
the war. We sat uncomfortably in a mixed atmosphere of 
liking and hate for some while, then, making our adieux, and 
followed by the setter-St. Bernard, we went home. 

I think that we first discovered the lack of privacy while 
we were undressing. We had left the front windows open 


VERDOLAY—HOUSEKEEPING 


129 


for air, and soon a crowd was watching our preliminaries to 
sleep. Luckily we discovered it early. Jan closed the 
shutters, upon which a number of boys sat down on our 
doorstep and sang serenades to us for several hours. 


CHAPTER XV 


VERDOLAY-SKETCHING IN SPAIN 

S KETCHING in Spain has inconveniences. In the 
summer the heat makes it imperative that the painter 
should be up with the dawn, for between eleven a.m. 
and four p.m. the heat and the brilliance of the light impose 
too great a strain on the eyes and the endurance. Under 
any circumstances we were almost forced to rise with the 
sun, for Milk and Vegetables both called before six. 

Verdolay was an excellent spot at which to begin an 
acquaintance with Spanish scenery. There was a great 
variety of subject matter. The village itself was full of 
vividly coloured houses, and at the back was the wonderful 
old monastery of Santa Catalina. In the valley less than 
half a mile away were the huertas, or irrigated gardens, 
full of rich green. On the sides of the mountains were the 
olive terraces, which traced the architecture of the hills in 
a way to delight the painter’s heart. Between the olives 
and the garden was the dusty cart road with its intermittent 
traffic, and the small dusty strung-out villages, the houses 
threaded on the road like beads on a necklace, especially 
that one called El Angel—though anything more arid and 
less angelic could hardly be imagined. In the hills them¬ 
selves were fine ravines of strangely coloured ferruginous 
earths, orange, purple and blue; and the tops of the foothills 
were often crested with monasteries, like that of La Luz, 
which gave the scene a most romantic atmosphere. I clung 
more or less to the village, Jan wandered about the sur¬ 
rounding country or sat in the insufficient shadow of the 
olive trees near El Angel. 


130 


VERDOLAY—SKETCHING IN SPAIN 131 


The first real inconvenience which we noted was that 
seldom did the best view possess a suitable piece of shade 
from which to paint it. Thus the artist’s task was doubled; 
one had to find coincident scene and shadow. The appar¬ 
ently aimless wander of the artist looking for a subject 
usually excited the curiosity of the passers-by, so that 
either one was irritated by a series of remarks or became 
possessed of a small following of the curious. I use a 



square hole cut in a piece of cardboard in order to test the 
view and judge whether it would frame as satisfactorily 
as it promised to do. Whenever I placed this square to 
my eye one of my followers bobbed up his head and stared 
back at me through the hole, trying to fathom the mystery 
of my act. Once I had begun work I would become the 
centre of an excited conversation. 

The first strokes of the brush aroused merriment. But 








132 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


often some onlooker astonished me by perceiving the object 
of my sketch long before the drawing was in any way clear. 
She (it was generally a she) would then be eager to exhibit 
her superior knowledge to the others. She would therefore 
dab her finger on to my painting to point out what she had 
perceived. This nuisance I fought by covering intrusive 
fingers with oil paint. By the time the overwise one had 
cleaned off the paint the drawing would be far advanced 
enough for the others to see for themselves what I was 



doing. As soon as I got well into the swing of work 
questions would begin. 

“Why do you do this? Is it to make picture postcards 
from? Why isn’t your husband with you? Are your 
father and mother alive? Do you like Spanish food? 
Have you got any children? If you have no children, as 
we have too many, would you like a baby to take away with 
you? Are you doing this for the cinematograph? Do you 
like painting? How old are you? Why haven’t you put 
in So-and-so’s house?” In this case the house in question 
was usually behind me. 

These questions were asked in Murcian Spanish not very 



VERDOLAY—SKETCHING IN SPAIN 133 


easy to understand with my small lack of acquaintance; 
and I had to take my attention off my painting in order to 
find suitable Spanish answers. I tried once not to answer, 
but my audience then demanded: 

“Are you deaf? Can’t you hear? Don’t you under¬ 
stand what we say?” 

All this was said with the most courteous of intentions, 
direct questioning being permissible in Spain. Chairs 
were generally brought out, one for me and others for the 
spectators. Nurse-maids with half-nude babies formed a 
large proportion of my audiences. The Spanish baby 
suffers from over nursing; it is carried remorselessly about 
from six in the morning till twelve at night; it is as a rule 
fretful and feverish both from the heat and from lack of 
sleep. Indeed Verdolay always shrilled with wailing 
children. 

At about nine o’clock the Spaniard takes a morning 
snack. This consists of a slice of bread soaked with olive 
oil and a dried sardine, the smell of which was almost par¬ 
alysing. With the perfect courtesy which marked all my 
peasant audiences, this would be offered to me before it 
was chewed loudly in my ear. When the heat was very 
great I would abandon my sketch as soon as the sardine 
stage arrived. 

I was continually pestered by polite requests that So- 
and-so should be painted in. This often led to a lecture on 
composition and on the introduction of figures. If I did, 
however, paint in anybody the enthusiasm was enormous. 
People would run down the road shouting in at every cot¬ 
tage door: 

“She has painted Enrico” (or Miguel or Maria) “into 
her picture. ’ ’ 

Once while near the water-fountain I painted in the 
donkey of a water-carrier. For days afterwards Paco, 
the donkey-boy, grasped the passers-by and exclaimed with 
tears of joy in his voice: 


134 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


“Ha pintado mi burro, mi burro.” 1 

The water-fountain was one of the gathering places of 
the village. It was the end of a small iron pipe which 
writhed down from the hills. 

There were generally three or four donkey-boys with 
cantaros, and a crowd of women with amphoras waiting 
their turns to wedge their pots beneath the small trickle 
which ran from the nozzle of the pipe. Old Grumpy spent 
the best part of his day there, sitting with sour face in the 
shadow of a small tree—his chief work was either waiting 
his turn or leaving his pots to fill themselves. A tall bank 
of prickly pear cactus made a background to the gay scene. 
Women came from dawn until midnight, and even from 
the villages of the valley, for water was very scarce and 
most of the water in the valley wells unfit for drinking. 
With their heavy cantaros on a projecting hip, these women 
walked two miles or more beneath the sweltering sun; and 
they asked me if I liked painting. 

Sometimes the ladies of the village stopped and made 
suitable remarks. One, a summer visitor, told me that she 
knew a very good painter—“very good indeed,” she said 
with a gentle emphasis which revealed what she thought 
of my work. “Why, he painted things five times as big as 
these which you do.” 

As the sketch progressed my audiences were very eager 
to point out to me anything which I seemed to have for¬ 
gotten. At this moment somebody always said that Uncle 
Pepe’s or Aunt Conchas’ house wasn’t in the sketch. These 
houses were invariably out of sight or behind my back. 
The Spaniards have futuristic instincts. But once they 
knew me, my friends would not have me criticized. One 
passer-by made some disparaging remark about the 
painting. 

“We won’t have our Dona abused,” said the nurse- 


i “She has painted my donkey, my donkey.” 


VERDOLAY— SKETCHING IN SPAIN 135 


maids. “She is very clever. She knows lots more than 
you do; and plays the piano as well.” 

Sometimes I accompanied Jan out into the country, in 
the direction of La Luz or down into the huertas. 

One day we were near La Luz and my interest was cap¬ 
tured by a lemon and vine garden which was cultivated on 
terraces down the side of a baking ravine. The farmer’s 
house with a red roof topped the hill. I sat down to 



paint. Presently the farmer with his wife and family 
clambered down into the ravine and climbed up the side to 
where I was sitting. Each time I returned the family 
came back and in awed silence watched the progress of the 
sketch. 

It happened that the water of Yerdolay was not very 
nice for drinking purposes, being full of minerals and 
salts, while that of La Luz was delicious. A poor woman, 







136 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


who did charing jobs for the farmer above-mentioned, was 
delighted to be allowed to carry ns heavy cantaros full of 
La Luz water, a mile and a half, for the pay of fivepence 
a cantaro. One day after the sketch was finished she came 
in with a look of importance on her face. 

“My Senora,” she said, “is enamoured of the little 
painting which you have done of her house and farm. She 
wishes to buy the sketch.” 

I had had some experience of Spanish prices, so I said: 

“These paintings are made to exhibit in England. It is 
of no use to tell you the price, because English prices and 
Spanish prices are different.” 

“But, Senora,” said the woman, “my masters are very 
rich, excessively rich. They will pay any price that you 
like to ask. ’ * 

But I suspected her protestations. The sketch was one of 
the best I had done in Spain. I was not very eager to 
part with it. But owing to her entreaties, against my 
better judgment, fixing a low price because of Spain, I said 
at last: 

“Two hundred pesetas.” 1 

Her mouth dropped open. For a moment she remained 
speechless with amazement. Then hastily crossing her¬ 
self she gasped out: 

“Madre Maria Sanctissima! ” 

Being a woman I was often asked to paint female por¬ 
traits, but suspecting the monetary value which the people 
would put on paintings I refused. Jan overheard a red¬ 
faced, wealthy looking farmer discussing with his father 
on our doorstep the question of how much I was likely to 
ask for a portrait of the farmer’s daughter. 

Bed Face: “I think we might offer her ten pesetas.” 2 

The Grandfather: “Well, she is foreign, she might de¬ 
mand fifteen.” 


1 $39.00. 

2 $2.00. 



VERDOLAY—SKETCHING IN SPAIN 137 


Red Face: “Even if she wishes twenty we might yet 
consider it; or perhaps twenty-five; but then we would have 
to think it carefully over.” 

Occasionally we would be asked into houses to examine 
pictures which the peasants believed to have value. In one 
house, a room was set aside as a small private chapel; it 
was full of painted plaster images covered with false jewels 
and tinsel; on the walls were oleograph reproductions of 
the Virgin by Spanish Old Masters, but one painting of 
the Murillo School probably had a real value. In another 
house we found a picture of Napoleon before which the 
inhabitants were burning a candle under the impression 
that the print represented an unidentified Saint. Maybe 
stranger personalities have been canonized before now. 

Jan escaped from intimate touch with the people by 
making for the open country. He thus had fewer adven¬ 
tures than did I. Often, however, peasants spied him 
from the distance of a mile, and came to see what he was 
doing. 

Once, when he had been painting on the cart-road near 
El Angel and had put a cart into his painting, a small boy 
followed him all the way home, shouting out to every one 
that he passed: 

‘ ‘ That is a painter! He painted a cart and horse; just 
as it went along; all in a flash ! 91 

We used to pin up our sketches on the wall of the house; 
because, as we intended to travel, we wished the sketches 
to become as dry as we could make them. This used to 
attract numbers of people, and usually the grilled window 
of our front room was occupied by a crowd of faces peer¬ 
ing into the house. The fame of our picture exhibition 
spread over the country-side. People came from some 
distance to see the pictures; and if the front door was 
unlocked, walked in, saluted us, and proceeded to go the 
round of the walls. At first we found this disconcerting, 
but with use much of our needless self-consciousness ami 
desire for unessential privacy began to wear off. 


138 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


As we left our front window open during the night for 
air, we were many times awakened by the voices of the 
picture-gazers who gathered at our window as soon as the 
day broke. 


CHAPTER XVI 


VERDOLAY—CONENI 

T HE peasant who came every morning with his daugh¬ 
ter and donkey-cart full of vegetables and fruit at 
the dawn was rather like a genial bird of prey in 
features. This type is typically Spanish. There was 
something of the condor about him, though one can scarcely 
picture a condor with his welcoming smile or his kindly 
nature. He began with a fixed idea of our practical dumb¬ 
ness and deafness to the Spanish language. He was, we 
learned later, an exquisite dancer. We have heard tell of 
a well-known musician who has a dance for making the 
household beds, and another for digging potatoes, and so 
on, trying to bring aesthetics into the commonplaces of life. 
Coneni, for such was the peasant’s name, tried to dance 
for us the fact that tomatoes were a halfpenny a pound or 
that a melon was sixpence. His pretty, demure daughter 
resorted to more practical measures, held up fruit as sam¬ 
ples and condescended to calculate in pesetas and centimos 
instead of in “royals” and “little hitches.” 

But the manners both of Coneni and of his daughter 
were impeccable. I think that they overcharged us slightly, 
but that was the Spanish tradition. Certainly they did 
not overcharge us as much as they would have done had 
they not liked us, and later on they quieted their consciences 
by making us presents. 

Coneni was one of the first of our picture admirers, but 
he had pre-Raphaelite tendencies, and always said that he 
supposed they would be better when we painted them out 
properly. He became eager that we should sketch in his 
market garden, and gave us elaborate topographical direc- 

139 


140 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


tions. So one day, shouldering our sketch-boxes, off we set. 

We passed through El Angel on to the Murcia road. We 
then asked a group of men, who were winnowing corn on a 
flat biblical threshing floor of beaten mud, which was the 
direction. Unfortunately we had got rather mixed in the 
name. The peasant had not spoken his name very clearly 
and we had confused it with conecho. 1 The winnowers 



said that they could not understand us very clearly, but 
that it was probably farther along, and they wished us to 
“go with God.” Further along the road we, having found 
in the dictionary what conecho really means, tried the other 
name. The use of this brought us into a narrow side-path 
between rows of mulberry trees and deep watercourses. It 
took a sudden turn to the left, and on the path we saw 
Coneni, tall and lank, waving welcoming arms at us. 

The place was embowered in trees: lemon, fig, pear, 
plum, apple, quince and pomegranate flourished luxuri- 


i Rabbit. 







VERDOLAY—CONENI 


141 


antly in the irrigated soil. The hnertas of the Mnrcian 
plain were not separated, one from another, by hedges, 
and it was difficult to know how large was Coneni’s garden. 
In one corner, beneath the shelter of overhanging fruit- 
trees, was a hut made of stiff bamboo-like reeds, the roof 
daubed with mud against the rain. From the front of this 
hut projected a long awning of reeds, beneath which the 
Coneni family was awaiting us. Mrs. Coneni was plump, 
motherly, and had a genial nature covering an inflexible 
will. She also had perfect manners, was full of courtli¬ 
ness and kindness, and was delighted to see us. She showed 
her naive pleasure by touching me whenever she was able 
to do so without rudeness. Our broken Spanish aroused 
her sense of wonder. Coneni, for the first time in his life, 
made up his mind to understand us. He stopped his 
habitual pre-breakfast pantomime and swaggered about, 
saying: 

“But I understand all they say. Yes, I do.” 

He disappeared into the square small hut and came out 
again carrying an enormous green water-melon called 
locally a sandia. He tapped it with a knuckle and, from 
the sound that it made, decided that it was ripe. He then 
cut off top and bottom with a small hatchet and divided it 
into huge slices. While we were eating the luscious pink 
fruit neighbours began to saunter up. They stood in a 
circle around us. Coneni, with the air of a showman, said: 

“Now I will show you something. She smokes; it is 
true. I have seen her myself. ’ ’ 

He made me a cigarette. The men were delighted and 
Mrs. Coneni was amazed. Coneni stood behind me with a 
lean hand on his hip, as if to say: “Alone I did it.” 

Beneath the reed shelter some of the children were lying 
asleep, and the youngest of all, a baby, was sitting by 
itself in a corner, stark naked, playing with a large lemon. 
The exquisite colour contrast between the transparency of 
skin of the sunburnt child and the hard yellow brilliance 
of the lemon filled me with a wild desire to paint it. In- 


142 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


deed, one does not come to appreciate the full beauty of 
the nude until one has seen it in a country where it is 
natural. In Spain the children, usually half nude, sprawled 
about in the heat in the most graceful of relaxed poses, 
sometimes lying half asleep across their mothers’ laps, 
and a continual impulse was driving me to make studies of 
them. But the task is almost impossible. The fact of 
being sketched is too unusual. The people, naturally un¬ 
selfconscious, at once become stiff and formal. 

Within Coneni’s hut was no furniture other than a four- 
post bed which almost filled the floor space. Here slept 
Coneni and his wife, and the space beneath the bed was 
used as a storehouse for melons. The children, three girls 
and four boys, all slept on the ground in the open beneath 
the shelter. But Mrs. Coneni explained to me with some 
care that the poverty was only apparent; that this was but 
their summer residence. For the winter they had a fine 
house in Alverca. 

We did not have any very keen impulse to paint—it had 
become for that afternoon rather too much of a ceremony, 
like the old State painter performing before the Court— 
but to save our faces we had to do something, so Jan 
painted a portrait of a calf, while I selected a lemon tree. 
Before I had half finished, the interior of the tree was 
swarming with Coneni’s children, hoping that they would 
be included. By my side sat Coneni’s little girl nursing a 
bantam, like a doll, assuring it that mother wouldn’t love 
it if it were not more quiet. 

“And the Senor plays the guitar,” exclaimed Coneni. 
“He is affectionate to music.” 

We discussed Spanish music and dancing. Coneni, 
bursting with hospitality, said: 

‘ ‘ Come again next Sunday. I will invite the young men 
and the girls and we will have a party. There are guitar 
and lute players at Alverca. They will all come.” 

Antonio’s brother-in-law, Thomas, had spoken of the gay 


VERDOLAY—CONENI 143 

times when there is a party in the huertas; we accepted 
eagerly. 

We went home laden with presents of fruit which Coneni 
had pressed upon us. Especially was our greed delighted 
with a large basket of figs. We had been asking the Conenis 
to bring us some figs for some days, but they had said: 

“We can’t bring you figs. Nobody sells figs here. We 
give them to the pigs.” 

So that evening we rivalled the pigs. 


CHAPTER XVII 


VEEDOLAY—THE INHABITANTS 

T HE little village of Verdolay was not a characteristic 
Spanish village, it was a watering-place. One came 
into it along the dusty road between banks on which 
grew the spiky aloe shrubs, behind which spread the 
spaced olive groves with trees drawn up into demure lines, 
amongst the grey foliage of which could be seen the red 
painted corrugated roofs of the French Silk Company. 
The village scrambled up a terraced hill. The lower edge 
was a line of orange-vermilion one-storied houses faced 
with a small promenade. Then the houses scattered. To 
the right as one faced the hill were the baths, a collection 
of bulky, ramshackle buildings which hid deep, cool court¬ 
yards, and from which came the plash of water and the 
sound of young voices. The hill-side was covered with ter¬ 
raced gardens in which were set houses painted yellow, 
green, blue or pink. The apex of the hill was decorated 
by an iron wind wheel for pumping. A ridge joined the 
crest of the hill to the mountains, and here perched the 
ancient monastery of Santa Catalina; while a mile away 
to the right, showing white amongst a green bed of palms 
and firs, was the country seat of the Count of El Valle, 
and to the left amongst groves of oranges was the villa of 
an ex-Prime Minister. 

One had almost a specimen of Spain in little in this one 
village. The vermilion houses, called the Malecon, shel¬ 
tered a transitory population; visitors to the baths, who 
like ourselves arrived in carts with furniture, and after a 
few months disappeared back to town duties. These were 

144 


VERDOLAY—THE INHABITANTS 


145 


usually of the superior artisan or small shopkeeping class. 
The second row of houses contained persons such as Don 
Ferdinand, the little Senor or the people who kept the 
baths. These represented the larger tradesmen and in 
general lived all the year in Verdolay, travelling to Murcia 
by tartana or by tram via Palmar. The two roads which 
swept up each side of the hill were edged with small cot¬ 
tages where the real peasantry lived, and the houses which 



stood amongst gardens on the hill terraces, each owning 
its proper entrance, were the residences of the merchantry. 
The Count of El Valle represented the county aristocracy 
and the ex-Prime Minister the Court. 

In spite of a somewhat evil local reputation, the 
peasantry could be counted as a quiet, hard-working, 
rather unintelligent, good-natured community which leaned 
vaguely, on the male side, to liberalism and atheism, but 
lacking the courage or determination to make either 



















146 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


effective. It cursed the Court and told dirty stories about 
the priesthood, but all exasperation evaporated in words. 
This peasantry is the foundation on which the whole of 
this plutocratical hill of Verdolay rests; and it labours as 
severely as any other peasantry, perhaps even working 
harder because of the lack of water, which adds a need to 
be satisfied before work is over. The average traveller 
has the idea that the Spaniard is lazy. We are not sure 
that this is a correct estimate of him. We English have 
made a god of “Work.” But indeed unnecessary work 
is mere foolishness. The great blessing to be sought for 
is leisure. Human advance comes from the reflections of 
leisure rather than from the activities of work. The Span¬ 
iard recognizes leisure as the benefit which it is. He has 
no false ideas about work. Adam bit the apple, and we 
pay his debts, but why load ourselves with compound 
interest at many hundreds per cent.? That is the Span¬ 
iard’s point of view. He works when he must work. He 
rises with the dawn or before it, say four a.m., he works 
till eleven o’clock, then in the afternoon resumes toil from 
3.30 till 6.30. The late-rising traveller who mouches about 
in his English custom during the hottest hours of the day 
sees the Spanish labourer at his siesta, snoozing by the 
roadside, or thrumming his guitar to a herd of sleepy 
goats. He draws a natural, though incorrect, conclusion. 

The Spaniard may be dilatory. He puts off doing to-day 
what he can do to-morrow, but it is from an exaggerated 
respect for the benefits of leisure. His handicap is that he 
has no proper means of filling that leisure, his apparent 
laziness comes from lack of education. About eighty per 
cent, cannot read, schooling is not enforced, and children 
begin work at ten years of age or thereabouts. But do not 
lay up the Spaniard’s desire for inactivity as a crime; it 
is a virtue ill employed. 

Our particular specimen of the Spanish peasant was my 
female servant, named Encarnacion. She was thirteen 
years old, could neither read nor write, and worked like a 


VERDOLAY—THE INHABITANTS 


147 


small mule for the not extravagant wage of eleven shillings 
and sixpence a month. She only worked half the day, it is 
true, but we did not give her food. We indeed overpaid 
her, for the regular wage of her kind was about eight shil¬ 
lings and fourpence a month. She had a small, stumpy 
child’s body, sprouting into a long neck, at the top of which 
was a rounded head. Her forehead was intellectual, her 
features flattened, and her hair, done up tight into a small 
ball, was usually decorated with a flower or a green leaf. 

At first, like all Spanish peasants, she made up her mind 
that she could not understand what I said, but gradually 
learned that she had to do so, and in general succeeded 
pretty well. But it was to her a tremendous intellectual 
effort. She would wrinkle her noble-looking brow with the 
strain, and was never satisfied until she had translated 
my orders into her own patois for clarity. But she would 
not allow her fundamental ideas of what was proper to be 
influenced by my foreign notions. Sometimes she would 
interrupt me. 

“No, Senora,” she would say, “I do not like it done thus. 
That is not the custom. It must be done so.” 

If one insisted upon one’s own way, the work was ill 
done. So that, as a rule, to save trouble, one allowed her 
to do as she wished. Encarnacion worked all the morning, 
singing an interminable Spanish song, which struck our 
ears queerly and pleasantly at the beginning, but of which 
in the end we grew very tired. By eleven o ’clock she would 
have done all the housework, the shopping and the cooking, 
and would leave the stone floors soaked in water, the 
evaporation of which did a little to counteract the intense 
heat. She had a habit which we did not like of scattering 
our household refuse all over the small square yard. It 
looked dirty and untidy, but we found out that she knew 
better than we did. The vagrant cats soon cleared up any 
remains of meat, while the hot sun dried up all the other 
refuse, which could then be thrown away conveniently. 

Encarnacion was sad that she could neither read nor 


148 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


write, and was proudly jealous of her younger sister, who, 
working in the milk factory, was being taught to spell. 

She of course acquired a proprietary right in us. She 
upheld the honour of the house, and gave a lesson in man¬ 
ners to a gipsy girl from the cave dwelling who had once 
thrown a stone at me. She also criticized our work. To 
the almost daily parties of strangers who walked into our 
house whenever the door was left unlocked, she acted as 
guide to our pictures drying on the walls, and she would 
explain to whom each house in the sketches belonged. 

But she never said ‘ ‘ Thank you. ’ ’ 

There are considerable differences between Spanish cus¬ 
toms and those of ordinary Europe, and these are apt to 
disconcert the traveller. Here are a few Spanish ones that 
we noted en passant. 

You may walk into any house or garden if moved to do 
so by curiosity if you, previous to entering, utter the magic 
formula: “Se pueda entrar V’ 1 

You may stare as much as you like at anything or any¬ 
body, for staring is in reality a compliment. 

Self-consciousness is a silly vanity. 

If you feel friendly towards an acquaintance you may 
call on him at nine in the morning and you may repeat 
your call three or four times during the same day. (What 
the man does to get rid of you we have not yet discovered. 
We have only been the victims, not the visitors.) 

You must refuse everything that is suddenly offered to 
you, except cigarettes or sweets offered in the fingers. Do 
not accept other things until the third offer. But to re¬ 
fuse sweets or cigarettes is almost insulting. 

You must offer to give any object to anybody who ad¬ 
mires it (especially objects of jewellery or babies). 

You may ask any questions you like, even upon the most 
intimate of subjects; and you must expect to be asked 
similar questions. 


i “May one enter V 



VERDOLAY—THE INHABITANTS 


149 


If invited to a meal, you may refuse no dish that is 
served to you, even though indigestion is clutching at your 
vitals, or repletion stopping your throat. 

For a specimen of the small tradesman class of the male- 
con we had La Merchora. She kept the village shop, the 
last house on the terrace, and was in some way a relative 
of Antonio. Her home was planned like ours was, and one 
of the rooms beside the entrada had been filled with a 
counter, some shelves, and a large tin of paraffin oil; ginger- 
coloured sausages were festooned from the roof and the 
shop was complete. She was unmarried, and therefore, 
from a theoretical point of view, negligible; but it did not 
disturb her. Indeed, little did disturb her. She had the 
figure which grows out of a combination of good living, no 
thinking and reasonable working. In any village you will 
find an example of her kind. She is good-natured but re¬ 
spected. Liberties are not taken with her, and in Cornwall 
she is called Aunt So-and-so. La Merchora was not even 
black-visaged, there was in fact nothing that one can count 
for Spanish about her. 

She had two epithets—atrocidad and barbaridad—but 
she said them with so jovial an aspect that atrocity or 
barbarity faded into the gentlest of denunciations. When 
our first servant, Encarnacion’s elder sister, deserted us 
without warning for a better job, La Merchora said it was 
an atrocidad; when the water-carrier over-charged us she 
said it was barbaridad. When the Count El Valle’s watch¬ 
man chased us off some square miles of unfenced unpro¬ 
ductive mountain she said it was atrocidad; when the 
weather was hot she said it was barbaridad. 

Every evening after supper there was a gathering out¬ 
side La Merchora’s shop. La Merchora, Uncle Pepe, her 
father, the niece, the gaunt woman from next door, her 
baby, half naked but with a flower in its hair, women coming 
through the night to fetch water (an interminable task), 
carters returning from work and others, would gather on 
chairs, benches, or on the stone wall of the malecon; and 


150 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


beneath the faint glow of the electric light would gently talk 
of things, while the niece was catching the foolish cicadas 
or crickets (attracted by the light) with which to amuse the 
baby and with which to awaken in the child some primary 
instinct of cruelty to animals. 

Uncle Pepe was La Merchora’s father. He was a with¬ 
ered brown peasant baked by the sun to the colour of a pot. 
Wrinkles of careful economy and of good humour were 
as indelibly roasted into him as the pattern on a Roman 
dish. In recognition of La Merchora’s accumulated kind¬ 
nesses I painted his portrait on a small panel for her. She 
pondered some while on the problem of a suitable recom¬ 
pense, and at last gave us an antique Sevillian basin deco¬ 
rated with a primitive painting of a yellow and green cat. 
It was an old and valuable piece of earthenware used for 
washing the linen, and had probably been employed to 
wash Uncle Pepe’s shifts and himself as well when he was a 
baby. These basins, two feet in diameter, are used as 
decorative and practical adjuncts to the huge red earthen¬ 
ware pots in which the villagers of the Murcian valley store 
the household water. We protested against the generosity 
of this gift, but in vain. One day, while we were out, she 
had it carried to our house, and would on no account re¬ 
ceive it back. 

Pepe and La Merchora illustrate the rapid evolution of 
the modern Spanish gentleman. Antonio is the third stage 
in the development. The little Senor is the fourth. Pepe 
is an unlettered peasant, knowing nothing but the labour of. 
the soil but possessing the traditional culture of Spain. By 
the time one has reached the little Senor and the people of 
the Baths, one has arrived at letters but one has lost much 
of the culture. Pepe’s wisdom is the common sense of cen¬ 
turies stored up in proverbs; he has one to fit every occa¬ 
sion. The little Senor ’s learning is supplied by the news¬ 
papers. The grandparents of all these people, even of the 
rich merchants who lived on the apex or Verdolay hill, 
were peasantry—Pepes, as a rule. Then one perceives 


VERDOLAY—THE INHABITANTS 


151 


that with the accumulation of wealth, the culture gradually 
diminishes in a like proportion. The third generation has 
lost almost all culture and has nothing but a kind heart 
and a love of making money. The Spanish bourgeoisie 
is inverting the processes which are going forward in Eng¬ 
land to-day. It is trying to forget its old customs—too late 
we are trying to revive ours. It has learned to despise 
its exquisite folk music, already becoming forgotten—we 
are trying to fudge out a few miserable tunes from the 
memories of senile fiddlers. 

These people have won to that leisure so sweet to the 
heart of man; but they don’t know what to do with it. 
They sleep and so grow fat. Having become fat they are 
good natured and laugh. The old saw should be inverted. 
Indeed, many an old saw is in reality the truth turned inside 
out. They were a good-natured kindly people, these bulky 
tradesmen, hut they were deadly dull. The daughters of 
Verdolay banged untuned pianos to the strains of dances 
forgotten by Europe, polkas, mazurkas and pas de quatre; 
but their own dances—the malaguenas and baturras—were 
unknown to them. They were pressing in their invitations, 
and were angry with us because we preferred La Mer- 
chora’s doorstep with its changing audience of passers-by. 

Of the Count and the ex-Prime Minister we know hut 
little; they lie, anyway, beyond the scope of this hook. The 
Count possessed in this district a country house set in a 
deep, wooded valley, in which was a medicinal spring, and 
a few square miles of unfenced sterile mountain land from 
which his watchman, armed with a gun, was instructed to 
drive away unauthorized pedestrians. He was not popular 
and was always at daggers drawn with the village; though 
from other sources we have learned that he is personally a 
charming and a generous man. At any rate he has left a 
fine estate to remain practically unproductive (the two 
farms and the house itself are in ruins). This practice 
seems to be normal in Spain, and we have heard of many a 
case where the aristocracy have deliberately hindered 


152 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


national development. There are rumours, however, that 
this estate is being bought for the government and will be 
afforested and developed. 

The ex-Prime Minister’s villa was the most amazing 
example of bad taste in architecture that we have ever 
seen. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


VERDOLAY—THE DANCE AT CONENI’s 

E had been looking forward to the dance which 



Coneni had promised us. Spanish music had 


become with us a hobby, and the dancing which 


goes with it had excited our imagination. Antonio’s sister 
had led us to believe that wonderful .dancing was to be 
found in the Murcian huertas, and the vague hints of gay 
times al campo stirred us up to eager anticipation. 

On Sunday afternoon at about four o’clock we set off, 
Jan carrying the big white guitar in its case. The cicadas 
were making their accustomed strident din in the mulberry 
trees, men on the roadside shouted to us: “ Vaya con dios, 
y con la guitarra. ’ ’ 

The Conenis were furbished up for the occasion. A few 
girls in bright cottons and a few young men in check suits, 
English caps and buttoned brilliant boots were awaiting 
us. Others came in one by one. Coneni chopped up a 
huge pink-fleshed melon for us, and while we were yet revel¬ 
ling in its cool lusciousness the faint sound of music was 
heard through the saw-note of the cicadas. The sound 
came nearer. Presently through the trees a band of 
youths and girls headed by a girl playing a guitar, and a 
boy of fourteen playing a Spanish lute (or laud) were 
visible. 

They marched into the garden thrumming bravely a 
popular two-step march. It is the custom of the musicians 
thus to arrive in full cry, as it were. Amongst the group 
was the little Senor’s nurse-maid bravely carrying through 
the heat the inevitable baby. Later on the baby caused a 
diversion by getting itself stung by a bee. 

The arrival of the music drove Coneni to a pitch of ex- 


153 


154 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


citement. He brought out a drinking flask of wine. The 
flask had a long slender spout, and the guests drank by- 
pouring the wine straight into their mouths, tilting their 
heads backwards. I was afraid of this method, and to my 
disgrace had to be given a glass. Tables and chairs, made 
of rough planking, were brought from neighbouring 
huertas. 

“Now,” cried Coneni, “for some dancing.” 

The guitar and laud players sat down. They played a 
polka, a common polka. And the girls and English-capped 
youths danced a solemn polka. Then followed a schot- 
tische, then another polka, then a murdered two-step. 

Disappointment rushed upon us. 

But where then was the Spanish dancing? Had this 
infernal European mechanical civilization quite driven all 
feeling from the land? Where were the jotas, the mala- 
guenas, the baturras? 

“But,” said Jan at last to Coneni, “can you not dance a 
Spanish dance?” 

“Why, of course,” cried Coneni. “Here, let us dance 
a malaguena. It is my favourite dance. Come, who will 
dance with me?” 

But there was nobody amongst the girls who could dance 
it. Mrs. Coneni said that she was too old and too fat. 
Nor was there amongst the laud players one who could 
play a maleguena, nor could the guitar player beat the 
tempo. 

So in the end it was Jan who played the malaguena as 
best he could, while Coneni, using his lank limbs with the 
flexibility of a youth, danced in marvellous fashion. But 
he soon tired of dancing solos. 

We went home, headed by the band, seconded by Coneni’s 
son carrying for us a large green melon, followed by 
Coneni *s daughter loaded with a basket of figs. 

We parted from the band at El Angel, we going up to 
Verdolay, they going across to Alverca, but with the good¬ 
byes the guitar-playing girl said: 


VERDOLAY—THE DANCE AT CONENI’S 155 

“Alia, but since you are so ‘affectionate’ to music we 
will come and play to you this evening at your house.” 

When Encarnacion heard this, she said: 

“Oh, beautiful! And I will ask all my friends and we 
will dance. And I will bring all Mother’s chairs.” 

We arranged all Encarnacion’s mother’s chairs in a neat 
circle in our entrada and waited. Nine o’clock went by- 
no music—ten passed and 10.30. At eleven o’clock we 
heard the band far away on the Alverca road. It came 
musically through the night. We had contrived an especial 
illumination of candles, but our guests repudiated houses. 



They were too hot. So in spite of any possible traffic the 
chairs were dragged out into the middle of the road, and we 
had our concert there. 

It was not a very inspiring concert. At the opening of 
it the young laud player handed his instrument to* Jan, 
demanding that it should be tuned. We discovered later 
that quite a number of the minor village executants cannot 
tune their own instruments. Jan, however, at. this time 
knew nothing about lauds. So the boy had to do the best 
he could with it. He managed to worry the instrument 
more or less into tune with itself, but the task of getting 


156 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


his laud accorded with his sister’s guitar was beyond his 
power. However, a concert could not be disturbed for so 
trifling a matter; and to the perfect satisfaction of the 
players, and, as far as we could see, of the audience, the 
two instruments played until about three o’clock in the 
morning, each one a semi-tone different in pitch from the 
other. 

We»had provided bottles of wine for the occasion at the 
cost of sixpence a bottle. This wine was the ordinary 
drinking* wine of the district. It speaks well of the abste¬ 
miousness of the Spaniard that though we had at least 
thirty guests about half a bottle of wine only was drunk. 
The major part of the audience contented itself with cool 
water from the algazarra. 

Some time later on in the evening the players confided 
to us that they were the pupils of a maestro who lived in 
Alverca, and that they had only been studying for two 
months. The fact that there was a teacher in Alverca fired 
me. I had wanted to learn the laud for some while, but the 
opportunity had not offered itself. I inquired his terms. 
The band said that they were twopence-halfpenny a lesson. 
So I at once told it to send the maestro along. At 3.30— 
after we had been wondering for some time how much 
longer our eyes would remain open—the band took its 
leave, saying that it would come again one evening. It 
then marched, playing loudly, back to Alverca. 

The maestro sent word that he would come on Tuesday 
evening. He was of that type of southern European that 
the American terms “Dago.” He was typically Dago. He 
was a plumber by trade, and in the evening augmented his 
income by odd twopence-halfpennies picked up from the 
would-be “ affectionates ” of the guitar or laud. He loved 
wine with a sincere though timid reverence. When she 
heard that he was coming to give me a lesson, Encarnacion 
said: 

‘ ‘ Oh, beautiful! And we will all come and listen to your 
lesson, and afterwards we will dance. ’ ’ 


VERDOLAY—THE DANCE AT CONENI’S 157 


But even Spain could not make me unselfconscious 
enough to support that test. With grim harshness we 
locked the door on our lessons. 

The maestro, like Bias, considered two airs his daily 
portion. At the end of the first air he would empty his 
tumbler of wine, and would gently repudiate the idea that it 
should he refilled. The third glass he accepted with quite 
vehement protestations. His course homeward was, I fear, 
usually more discursive than that of his coming. Like all 
Spanish musicians he sang upon the slightest excuse. He 
corrected my melody'by singing: “Lo, La, Lo, La, Lo, La,” 
as I played. 

Having played the violin, the mandolin and the piano, 
I did not find the laud very difficult. It has a queer tuning 
in fourths and is played with the plectrum. But when La 
Merchora discovered that I had learned a piece in two days 
she was quite eloquent in her astonishment. 


CHAPTER XIX 


MUKCIA—THE LAUD 

D URING our month in Verdolay we had not quite 
cut off communication with Murcia. Luis and his 
friend Flores had come out to lunch with us, bring¬ 
ing with them a slab of odoriferous dried fish which 
they said was excellent in salads. On this occasion many 
families in Verdolay had offered to cook our dinner for 
us, Encarnacion’s mother, the shopping woman, the woman 
who brought the water and La Merchora were the principal 
competitors; and the dinner was finally cooked out in the 
open in La Merchora’s back-yard in a huge frying-pan. 
We had also travelled the five dusty miles into Murcia, 
walking, to the grave astonishment of Verdolay plutocracy. 
On the first occasion Antonio told us with a face of joy 
that his wife was out of danger. 

“Out of danger,” cried we; “but she was only suffering 
from a small digestive attack.” 

“Oh, no,” replied Antonio; “didn’t I tell you that she 
had smallpox? Why, a man died of it three doors down 
the street. ’ ’ 

Before we had quitted Verdolay, Rosa (Antonio’s wife) 
was well enough to be moved, and Antonio had brought her 
into the country to the Count’s country house. She was 
spotted like a pard with large brown marks which Antonio 
assured us would disappear with time, leaving no pits. 

On another visit Jan had gone into the shop of Emilio 
Peralta to buy some guitar strings. The shop of Emilio 
was not like that of Ramirez in Paris. It was set in a 
canyon of a street so deep that the midday sun for one 
short hour or so shines on the cobbles, so narrow that the 

158 


MURCIA—THE LAUD 


159 


carts which pass through it are permitted to go in one sole 
direction marked at the entrance by a pointing arrow. 
Ramirez had a workshop only, but Emilio had as well on 
his working bench three brave show-cases painted apple 
green, one of which was filled with instruments—guitars, 
lauds and bandurrias—with a drawer for strings, capo- 
d’astros and other instrumental appurtenances. Of the 
two other show-cases, one housed the guitar-maker’s tools, 
the third having degenerated to a pantry, and while one 



was buying strings from Emilio, his wife would be sur¬ 
reptitiously taking dishes of boiled garbanzos or of dried 
sardines out of the garishly painted fraud. The place was 
indeed workshop, pantry and reception room. A counter 
cut the place in two. To the left as you entered Emilio 
made his instruments. To the right was a rough semi¬ 
circle of chairs, and here the aficionados 1 of the guitar 
came in the evening, to play on Emilio’s latest creation. 


i Lovers. 






160 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


To our dismay, however, we found that the intensely inter¬ 
esting music of Spain, the Flamenco, as it is called, was 
somewhat despised in Emilio’s shop. In Spain, music is 
divided to-day into the major divisions, Classical and Fla¬ 
menco. Classical includes anything from Beethoven to 
Darewski, from Sonata or Symphony to Fox-trot or Polka. 
The guitar-maker to-day says proudly: “I do not make 
instruments for ‘Flamenco,’ mine are made for ‘Clas¬ 
sical’ and he hut echoes the had taste of the educated 
Spaniard. The Flamenco, the native music, having per¬ 
haps a stronger character than any other Folk music in 
Europe, is considered very vulgar; it is called “Tavern 
Music,” as “still lives” in painting are called “Tavern 
pictures.” 

Nevertheless, we were not to he seduced from our desire 
to study the Flamenco, and for the purpose of continuing 
that study I had been looking out for a laud which is pecu¬ 
liarly adapted to the music, much of which was composed 
originally upon this instrument. Hitherto I had been un¬ 
able to find an instrument which I had liked, for the ordi¬ 
nary lute is queer in shape and rather harsh in quality. 
But the plumber-maestro in Alverca had lent me an instru¬ 
ment—a laud of simpler form and sweeter tone, called a 
sonora—which pleased me. 

Jan going into Emilio’s shop had found there a newly 
completed sonora, very like that of the little maestro’s, 
but better in quality. He engaged Emilio to keep it till 
we returned, and Emilio said he would bring the Professor 
down to play it for us to show oft its qualities. On the 
evening of the day on which we came back to Murcia we 
went to Emilio’s shop. The chairs were all set in their 
prim semicircle and Emilio, round-shouldered and heavy¬ 
faced, sat us down while he expatiated on the excellence of 
the workmanship and the beauty of the tone of his instru¬ 
ment. He demanded sixty pesetas for the instrument, but 
said that we might possibly come to some friendly arrange- 


MURCIA—THE LAUD 


161 


ment over the price, as he was trying to popularize this 
form, of laud. The little Professor came in. He was a 
strange man. He was extremely emaciated, with one eye 
destroyed and almost blind in the other, dressed in outre 
style as though he were acting as jockey in an impromptu 
charade. His flexible hands seemed almost translucent in 
their delicacy. He at once addressed us with such rapidity 
of speech that we were unable to understand what he said 
(though our understanding of Spanish had made great 



progress), and he was extremely irritable with us for 
seeming so stupid. This frail, delicate, peering thing was 
a queer contrast to the burly, almost clumsy form of Emilio. 

The little Professor picked up the sonora, and passed it 
backwards and forwards slowly beneath his short-sighted 
eye. He sat down and played. His nimble fingers ran up 
and down the strings. We had almost decided to begin the 
delicate matter of bargaining when a fat form, white- 






162 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


waistcoated, straw hat perched jauntily over an Egyptian 
face, showed itself in the doorway. It was Bias. And 
Bias was drunk. He bowed in an heroic manner to me, 
shook hands in simulated affection with Jan; and, his soul 
obviously consumed with jealousy, greeted the little Pro¬ 
fessor, who returned his salutation with coldness. 

“Go on,” ordered Bias to the little Professor, “play.” 
The little man put the sonora again on his thigh. One 
could almost hear his teeth grit. Then he began to show 
off. He possessed a very effective trick of playing intri¬ 
cate runs by the mere beat of the fingers of his left hand, 
that is without plucking the strings with his right. This 
he now exhibited to its full. He was on his mettle, Greek 
and Trojan were face to face. Bias, seated on his chair, 
his fat hands on his knees, smiled a drunken and somewhat 
patronizing approval of his rival’s exhibition. 

The little Professor finished his exhibition, which the 
gipsy did not attempt to rival, for he played only the guitar. 
For a moment there was an embarrassing silence. The 
gentle art of bargaining was about to displace the art of 
music. But we had reckoned without the half-drunken 
Bias. 

Suddenly rising to his feet he faced Jan, and rubbing 
his finger and thumb together he exclaimed: 

“Now comes the main point. The brass. Now is the 
question of cashing up for it.” 

Doubtless this was a frank statement of fact. But three- 
quarters of life continues bearable enough because one does 
not put things frankly. Emilio changed colour and put on 
a sullen face, Emilio’s wife looked alarmed, Jan was em¬ 
barrassed, the little Professor seemed to wither into a 
crouching shape of half his normal smallness. 

But Bias went on in a breezy voice to Jan: 

“Come on, come on. What’s the matter? You sug¬ 
gest a price to him and he will tell you if it fits.” 

Emilio’s delicacy was quite revolted by this crude exhibi- 


MURCIA—THE LAUD 


163 


tion of gipsy bad taste. He seized the laud from the little 
Professor, thrust it on one side and said loudly that he did 
not want to sell it at all. 

Unfortunately, Jan was afraid of offending Emilio’s 
susceptibility. Not knowing how to behave in the unfortu¬ 
nate circumstances, he blurted out: 

“Look here, Emilio, you said sixty pesetas. Will you 
not come down a little, and then we could settle the 
matter ? ’ ’ 

Emilio was, however, extremely bad-tempered by the 
turn things had taken. The Spanish sense of decency was 
outraged. At last, with an evil look at Bias, he muttered: 

“Well, fifty-five pesetas. Not a penny less and no more 
bargaining.” 

Jan, to cut the scene short, agreed. The instrument was 
wrapped up in a paper bag. While Jan was paying over 
the money, Bias said: 

“And you will give five pesetas to this gentleman, who 
is a poor man: and five pesetas to me also. ’ ’ 

He seized five pesetas of the money from the counter and 
pressed them on the little Professor. The latter, with 
girlish giggles, refused; but Bias, with the insistence of a 
drunkard, pressed his desire until, to quieten him, the little 
Professor slipped the money into his waistcoat pocket. 
Bias then demanded his own commission, saying that as he 
had been Jan’s Professor, and as Jan had once mentioned 
the subject of the laud to him, he was fully entitled to his 
claim. But Jan, outwardly calm, inwardly annoyed with 
Bias, would not give him a halfpenny. At last Bias was 
begging: 

“Well, at least give me a peseta to get a drink with.” 

“You have had enough drink already,” said Jan. 

He picked up the laud, and with farewells to Emilio, his 
wife and the little Professor we walked out of the shop, 
pushing our way through the crowd which had gathered 
at the shop door. 


164 TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 

On the following day we returned to Emilio’s shop to 
apologize for the contretemps. We found both Emilio and 
his wife very disturbed by what had happened. They said 
that their regrets were eternal, and that it would have been 
better had we deferred the business matter until a better 
occasion. 

“It was a disgraceful affair,” said Emilio, “disgraceful; 
and to cap it all, after you had gone, Bias was most out¬ 
rageous. We had actually to pay him two pesetas to go 
away.” 

“We were afraid of our lives,” said Mrs. Emilio. “He 
is a bad man, and one never knows what rogues he might 
have brought upon us. ’ ’ 

Though Jan did not believe much in the active danger 
of Bias, yet the terror of Emilio and of his wife was quite 
evident. So in the end he disbursed the five pesetas given 
to the little Professor as well as the two given to Bias. So 
that our laud actually cost us sixty-two pesetas, instead 
of the sixty for which we might have bought it without any 
bargaining. 

With the little Professor we had made an engagement 
for the afternoon. He was to give me a lesson on which I 
could study while we were away at Jijona. He came, feel¬ 
ing his way up our staircase. He shook hands with us and 
said that the affair of last night had greatly oppressed his 
spirit. 

“I felt it much in my heart,” he said. 

We explained to him that we were going away for a 
month, but that we would return to Murcia later, and that 
when we returned I would take lessons from him. 

“My price,” he exclaimed (all his speech was exclama¬ 
tion), “is one duro a month. I am not one of those villains 
who charge one price to one person and a different price 
to another. No, my price is fixed and unalterable. One 
duro, five pesetas, a month. ’ ’ 

Now, although this little man was probably as good a 


MURCIA—THE LAUD 


165 


teacher as could be found in the town of Murcia, his price 
averaged about twopence a lesson. 

We discovered later that the laud suffers not only from 
a ban of “bad taste,” but also from a moral one. To-day 
its use in Spain is almost limited to the playing of dance 
music in houses of bad fame. 


CHAPTER XX 


ALICANTE 

O UR second experience in Spanish village life was to 
be at Jijona, a small town in the country near 
Alicante. Our friend had what he called a studio 
there, and this was at our service. Luis said that there 
was furniture in the studio hut no cooking utensils or bed. 
After our packing-case bed in Verdolay, we determined to 
take with us nothing but a mattress and either to sleep on 
the floor or to buy planks locally. So we had packed our 
trunk with painting materials, crockery and clothes. We 
had also made up a large roll of bedclothes and mattresses 
such as emigrants travel with. Having risen with the 
dawn, our preparations were complete by the time at 
which the donkeyman who peddled drinking-water about 
the streets of Murcia called for us with his long cart. He 
was not quite satisfied with our roll, and with expert hands 
repacked it in a professional manner. But his long water- 
cart would only take our trunk and the rolled mattress, 
so, burdened with rucksacks, camera, guitar, thermos 
flasks and a rush basket containing crockery which would 
not pack into the trunk, and the laud, we walked the quarter 
of a mile to the station. Thus burdened, we expected more 
staring and laughter than before from the Murcianos, but, 
to our amazement, the people looked upon us with kindly 
eyes and wished us God-speed. Thus Spain reverses the 
manner of England. 

Jan took his place in the ticket queue while I, assisted 
by a friendly porter, looked for seats in a third-class car¬ 
riage. The carriages were full enough despite the fact 

166 


ALICANTE 


167 


that we were in good time. Large numbers of children 
seemed to be travelling, and many of the passengers were 
stretched out on the wooden seats, taking a snooze before 
the train should start. The divisions between the com¬ 
partments were only breast high, and already animated 
conversations had begun between the passengers who, from 
different compartments, shouted remarks to each other. 
In our compartment were a sandalled peasant stretched at 



full length, a bearded man with a huge brass plate on his 
breast and a shot-gun, evidently a game-keeper, and a 
smart young man with patent leather boots and a straw 
hat. The last was reading a book. On the platform we 
noted an important priest striding about, his black soutane 
covered with a silk dust-coat, and an old woman with a 
posy of bright flowers about twice as big as her head. The 




168 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


train was the centre of an excited crowd, the carriage full 
almost to bursting-point. As the time for departure came 
near most of those we had imagined to be our fellow pas¬ 
sengers got slowly down on to the platform; all the chil¬ 
dren disappeared. They had merely been taking advantage 
of the train’s presence in the station to take a rest. 

The three strokes on the bell, which denote the starting 
of the train, had sounded when our carriage door was flung 
open and a panting bundle of humanity was thrust upwards 
and amongst us. As the train moved out, it resolved itself 
into a small woman, very loquacious, carrying in her arms 
three babies. Talking very excitedly, she laid her brood 
out on a wooden seat. The woman was black-haired and 
her jet eyes sparkled with excitement. 

“They are bandits,” she exclaimed. “Yes, bandits they 
are, rushing about like that. I was with my children in 
Uncle Pepe’s donkey-cart. Then they come along. Of 
course the bullocks in the stone waggon in front wouldn’t 
move quick enough, and so they come tearing across the 
road, flip us under the axle, and over we all go into the 
dust. Uncle Pepe strained his wrist and the shaft is 
broken. And that’s the way they treat us just after my 
poor husband had died of smallpox. It’s lucky that nobody 
was killed and that I didn’t lose the train. Murderers, 
that’s what they are.” 

We noted that she and her babies were covered with dust, 
and that she was dressed all in black even to her alpagatas. 
While she had been talking so volubly she had been un¬ 
packing a basket which, with the bundles, had been thrust 
in after her. She got out a bottle of water and a piece of 
rag. With a moistened rag she tried to wash the babies, 
but made rather a smeary mess of it. The occupants of 
the other compartments were leaning over sympathizing 
with her mishap. But, as she had omitted the cause of the 
mishap, somebody questioned her. 

“Why, motors, of course,” she snapped. “It’s mur¬ 
derous the way they go rushing about. Not caring for 


ALICANTE 169 

any one, and not waiting to see what damage they have 
done. ’ ’ 

As most of the carriage occupants seemed to be peas¬ 
antry, they agreed with her. Somebody went on: 

“And are those all you have?” 

The young woman drew herself up with pride. “No,” 
she answered, “I’ve got four, and all men too.” 

The train was rolling with a determined manner down 
the Murcian valley. On one side the hills drew closer, on 
the other they were receding. We noted that all the car¬ 
riage doors were left swinging wide open to admit as much 
air as possible. Presently there was a noise outside and 
the ticket-collector scrambled into the carriage. He exam¬ 
ined all the tickets in our coach, and swung himself again 
out on to the footboard, making his way slowly forward. 
Some of the passengers, too, who had friends in other car¬ 
riages made visits en route, scrambling along the moving 
train. And the carriage doors had notices on them saying: 
“It is dangerous to put the head out of the window.” 

After an hour or more of sedate travel, we came to 
Orihuela, which boasts a huge monastery on the hill and a 
broad zigzag road which looked like an engineering feat. 
The station was like a flower shop. Venders were running 
up and down the train thrusting elaborate bouquets into 
the windows. Some women dressed in royal blue satin 
came into our carriage, they stuffed unfortunate live poul¬ 
try and rabbits, with feet tied up, under the seat and 
covered the wooden bench of the compartment with mag¬ 
nificent flowers. During the rest of the journey, the 
monotonous flip, click of their fans as they were opened 
and shut punctuated the conversation. 

We passed through the famous date palm groves of 
Elche and at last came in sight of the sea at Alicante, which 
was our terminus. The journey of about forty-five miles 
had taken us nearly four hours, and we were almost an 
hour and a half late. Time-tables are more or less orna¬ 
mental in Spain. 


170 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Outside the station at Alicante there was a horde of 
omnibuses surrounded by a fringe of touts. They were 
conducting their chaffering for passengers with a reason¬ 
able quietness, until they espied us. But perceiving that 
we were English and, therefore, fair prey, pandemonium 
broke out. Gradually the omnibuses filled and the babel, 
for babel it was, consisting of Spanish, Valenciano, bad 
French and worse English, died down. Two omnibus 
touts, however, persisted, and at last, in order to prevent 
battle between them, we chose our man for his looks. He 
promised to take us to the fonda from which started the 
motor service to Jijona. 

We had been warned by our English friend that it was 
often difficult to get seats on the motor, because the con¬ 
veyance started from Jijona and many of the passengers 
booked return tickets. The omnibus tout added to this 
that there was a fiesta at Jijona, and that many people 
were going there. However, he said: 

“If there are no seats in the motor, we will surely get 
them on the lorry, which will do just as well and is cheaper.” 

The omnibus was full with an unsmiling family, but we 
were crushed in. We were dragged along beneath a mag¬ 
nificent avenue of date palm trees which bordered the deep 
blue expanse of the Mediterranean, and then into streets 
of modern and of bad architecture. The family got out 
and paid the driver. Jan strained his eyes to see how much 
was the price, for we had foolishly made no bargain with 
the driver. As far as he could see most was paid in cop¬ 
pers. We then passed up into narrow and steep streets 
and halted before a wide door. The tout got down, but 
returned almost immediately, saying that the motor was 
full for two days. 

“The motor-lorry is better,” he said. 

With some difficulty the bus was turned round in the 
narrow street and we went downhill again, coming at length 
to the entrance of another fonda. We passed through its 
broad entrance and at a small office window interviewed 


ALICANTE 


171 


an old man who said that there was room in the lorry hut 
that he did not know when it was going. So we deposited 
our luggage in the wide entrance, amongst packing-cases, 
sacks of flour, mattresses and japanned boxes. We then 
asked the price of the bus from the tout. 

“Seven pesetas,” he said. 

The whole drive had not taken twenty minutes, and Jan 
was sure that the other family of four had not paid more 
than two pesetas for the lot. After some argument and 
much blasphemy from the driver, we paid five pesetas, and 
the bus drove off vomiting curses at us from both driver 
and tout. (On the return journey from Jijona we hap¬ 
pened on the same bus, but we made our bargain before¬ 
hand. The same trip then cost us two pesetas, and was 
accomplished with smiles instead of curses, and both driver 
and tout clapped us on the shoulder and wished us: “ Yaya 
con dios.”) 

This fonda was a typical peasant inn. The entrance door 
which pierced through a block of buildings was big enough 
to admit a full-sized traction engine, had there been such a 
thing in Alicante. This wide passage led into a big court¬ 
yard open to the skies. On each side of the courtyard a 
staircase led to balconies from which opened the doors of 
the bedrooms, below were the dark stables, and the court¬ 
yard itself was filled with the large two-wheeled tilted 
carts which, dragged by from two to eight draught ani¬ 
mals, keep up communications in Spain wherever the rail¬ 
way does not penetrate. To the right of the entrance was 
the fonda restaurant, and also a huge kitchen with several 
cooking fires at which the traveller, if he wished, could 
cook his own meals, and a long dining-table at which he 
could eat them. We went into the restaurant, for we were 
hungry. To our table came an old couple. They were 
at once friendly and told us that they had come from 
Africa. They were Spanish but had lived more than thirty 
years in North Africa, and though the old man could 
neither read nor write he could speak several African dia- 


172 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


lects quite well. They were making a pleasure tour of the 
south of Spain for a short holiday. They told us that the 
fonda was quite clean, and that we could take a room in it 
without fear. They added that though Murcia was but 
“a dirty village” the fonda there had been clean also, but 
that at Guadix they had been eaten alive. 

Our dinner finished, we sat ourselves down on a bench 
in the entrada and looked about us. 

To one side of the entrance was a small stall which sold 
iced drinks. Men and women were sitting in after-lunch 
ease amid the boxes and sacks which lined the opposite 
wall, on low chairs, or on the bench with us. A dog, shaved 
all over its body, partly because of the heat, partly to keep 
off the fleas with which all Spanish animals are infested, 
was asleep on our mattress. The proprietor of the fonda 
was standing in a lordly manner in the middle of the floor. 
He was dressed in white shirt and flannel trousers, and 
must have weighed almost sixteen stone, although quite 
young. He looked as if he had been inflated with air. 

We had noticed, though we have not before mentioned, a 
curious illness which seems prevalent in Spain. In Murcia 
were large numbers of monstrous children; boys and girls 
had reached enormous proportions before the age of ten 
years old. We came to the conclusion that it was a form 
of illness, because, though the children seemed healthy 
enough, we have never seen this development of mon¬ 
strosity elsewhere, nor did large numbers of them appear 
to survive adolescence, though there were a certain number 
of excessively fat girls. The proprietor was such a 
monstrosity grown up. His wife, a dark-eyed beauty, was 
sitting in a rocking-chair near the kitchen door and her 
baby of about three years old, standing in its mother’s lap, 
was having a great lark, pretending to catch lice in its 
mother’s head. Thus do our ideas of innocent sports for 
children differ from those of other nations. 

There was some coming and going amongst the fonda 


ALICANTE 


173 


visitors. The guests seemed to be all peasants, the men in 
blouses, the women in pale skirts, black blouses and shawls 
of paisley pattern over the shoulders. Many had bundles 
of towels and of bathing dresses. One group we heard 
saying that they had come down to Alicante for a week’s 
sea bathing. 

As the afternoon drew on and the lorry delayed, we 
again interviewed the old man, who answered that prob¬ 
ably it would not come that day. Accordingly, we spoke 
to the proprietor, who rather roughly said that we could 
have a room for two pesetas a night. The room was small, 
and the bed only just big enough for two. There were two 
doors, one leading into the interior of the inn, one out on 
to a balcony. The latter was half of glass and had no lock, 
and as there was plenty of traffic along the balcony, which 
was used for drying linen, underclothes and bathing dresses, 
one only had a chance of privacy by closing the shutters, 
leaving oneself in the dark, and no chance of sleeping with 
the window open despite the heat. But Spain does not 
believe in open windows or doors at night; it has * ‘ a robber 
complex.” 

We put our small luggage into the bedroom, leaving the 
large trunk and the roll of mattress in the entrada. We 
then went out to explore the town and to find a young 
painter to whom we carried an introduction from Luis. 
Emilio, for such was his name, was one of the lucky ones 
of this world. His parents kept a wine-shop which relieved 
him of a pressing need of earning a living. He could thus 
study at his ease. Our investigations took us through a 
shop full of large barrels, up some narrow stairs and on 
to a landing where two girls were working at pillow lace. 
Emilio received us with a brusque cordiality, showed us 
some of his work, which had talent, came back to the inn 
with us, where he arranged for our transport by the lorry 
whenever it should arrive, and said that he would also find 
a carter to take our heavier luggage out on a road waggon. 



174 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


This readiness to help a stranger, often at considerable 
personal effort, we found characteristic of the parts of 
Spain which we have visited. 

Emilio, having an engagement, left us, and we strolled 
through the town. To the east lies the older part of the 
Port clambering up the rugged side of the steep rock, at 
the top of which lies the castle. The fishing village, at the 
extreme end of Alicante, is beautiful with its small primi¬ 
tive cubic houses painted in garish patterns. Through 
steeply sloping streets we came to the beach. Here were 
Mediterranean fishing-boats drawn up in ranks; then, as 
we returned towards the harbour, more open beach covered 
with people in gay dresses and children playing on the 
sands. Then came the bathing establishments built out 
on piles over the tideless sea. The bathing establishments 
increased in luxury towards the town and were, for the 
most part, fantastic wooden erections of Moorish design. 
We came back to the broad double avenue of palm trees 
which faced the more luxurious hotels and cafes. 

Night came softly on, and one by one amongst the palms 
the lights of the town threw beams over the chattering 
people who strolled in ever-thickening processions to and 
fro beneath the palm trees; mingled with the conversation 
was the incessant click, click of the fans of the girls and 
women. We went hack to the fonda for supper and after¬ 
wards returned to the sea front. The cafes had spread 
tables beneath the palms, and we sat down enjoying our 
“Blanco y negro,” an iced drink composed half of white 
cream ice flavoured with vanilla, and half of iced coffee. 

Bands of musical beggars assailed us. Most of the 
mendicants were blind. One group, a veritable orchestra, 
travelled from cafe to cafe clinging to the edges of a bass 
viol which the one seeing member, the money collector, 
dragged the way it should go, by the peg-head. There was 
an old guitarist who played and made queer noises through 
a small gazoo. Another orchestra of three, guitar, laud 
and bandurria, the latter instrument a small cousin of the 


ALICANTE 


175 

land, and in this case played beautifully by a blind boy of 
about nineteen years. There were other beggars too, but 
the devil of cheap European music had entered into them 
all. Not one played their own native Spanish music. I 
suppose nobody would pay to hear it played. 



At the end of the palm avenue an artist had set up an 
easel on a raised dais. His work was illuminated by a 
strong acetylene gas lamp. The canvas was painted bright 
sparrow’s egg blue and surrounded by a frame of staring 
gilt. On the blue canvas he was painting an imaginary 
landscape, the blue serving as sky and for the waters of a 







176 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


still lake. A drab woman was threading her way to and 
fro through the crowd which surrounded him, crying out: 
“The numbers, the numbers. Who would like to win a 
magnificent picture, framed complete for ten chances a 
penny ?” 

Another crowd surrounded a buck nigger who, display¬ 
ing his magnificent and gleaming teeth, was crying out the 
virtues of his dentifrice. 

A third crowd listened to a quack doctor who, backed by 
a large picture depicting the jungle, was selling a specific 
called “African Tonic.” The tonic, he said, was derived 
from essences extracted at enormous expense from the 
tiger, the elephant, the monkey, and from I know not what 
else. From time to time he rested his voice by turning on 
a squeaky gramophone. 

Tired from our journey we v'ent to bed betimes. 

We got up early. In the waggons, which were lined up 
in the big courtyard, the families which had slept in them 
were making their toilet. In the entrada, the old man of 
the inn, aided by the stable boy, was packing away the 
hammock beds slung from trestles, on which slept those 
travellers who, having no waggon, did not wish to pay the 
expense of a bedroom. 

We had noted small cafe stalls near to the market, so, 
in order to see some more of Alicante life, we took our 
breakfast there rather than in the fonda. The cafe stalls 
were wooden box-like kiosks, and they spread wicker chairs 
and tables over the open street, and soldiers and workmen 
were sitting sipping their morning refreshment. Beneath 
the shelter of the kiosk a lad was making the day’s supply 
of ice cream. The cream is frozen by the amount of heat 
absorbed from it by the freezing mixture. One might also 
say that the amount of refreshment to be derived from 
ice cream seems proportionate to the amount of energy 
absorbed from the lad who manufactures it: it appeared 
a fatiguing business. Crowds of people on the way to 
market passed us, and to where we sat came the cries of 


ALICANTE 


177 


the market salesmen. We were not stared at here as we 
had been in Murcia. Strangers were evidently more 
common. 

A small boy stationed himself near our table gazing 
longingly at a breakfast roll. To all intents and purposes 
he hypnotized it from the table into his hand. He broke 
into unexpected French. His father, like so many Span¬ 
iards, had been working at Lyons during the war. He 
deplored the fact that he had no education, but said that 
he was trying to learn some English from the sailors who 
came to Alicante. He had begun with the swear words, 
of which already he had a fair collection. He said that his 
father was a bootmaker, out of work, and asked if we had 
any boots to mend. He wheedled also some cigarettes and 
a few coppers from us. 

Emilio, who had sent off our heavy luggage on the 
previous night as he had promised, met us, and together 
we went to a cafe on the front, where we wrote a letter to 
Antonio saying that we had left our passports behind by 
accident. In spite of this oversight we had decided to 
push on to Jijona and to trust to luck. 

After lunch we again sat down in the fonda wondering 
if the motor-lorry would come. Many peasants also were 
there. Motor omnibuses drove in, but these were destined 
for other parts. Opposite the bus office was a gambling 
machine, into which one pushed a penny and if one were 
lucky received back twopence, fourpence, sixpence or even 
tenpence. But this machine had gone wrong, and the bulky 
proprietor spent the greater part of the afternoon over it 
with a screw-driver. A drunkard was staggering up and 
down, now shouting, now singing, now dancing a few un¬ 
steady steps. The stable boys were making a butt of him. 
Presently he sat down on a sack and fell asleep, his head 
tilted back, his mouth open. The opportunity was too good 
to miss. 

Pulling out his sketch book, Jan began to make a sketch. 
The old ticket-office man, perceiving what Jan was doing, 


178 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


leaned over his shoulder, and as the sketch developed began 
to chuckle. Soon there was a double queue of spectators, 
giggling with suppressed laughter, stretching on each side 
from Jan to the drunkard across the width of the entrada. 
When the drawing was finished, the old man exclaimed: 

“But that is excellent; will you not give it to me, Senor?” 

Jan made of the drawing a rapid tracing which pleased 
the old man as much as the original. 

“I’ll keep that,” said the old man. 

To our horror he walked across the entrada, with a thump 



in the ribs awoke the drunkard, and showed him the sketch. 
Gradually, as he realized what had been done, an expres¬ 
sion of wrath grew on the drunkard’s face. Luckily for us, 
he became possessed of the idea that the drawing had been 
done by one of the stable hoys. No one undeceived him 
and, amidst roars of laughter, he addressed a long speech 
to the stable boy in question. 

“The rights of man,” said the drunkard, “are inaliena- 


ALICANTE 


179 


ble, and of all the rights of man, the greatest right is that 
of his person. The stable boy has, therefore, transgressed 
against the most sacred of men’s rights. I could have 
excused most things,” went on the drunkard, “but this is 
inexcusable; to inflict indignity on a man in his own person. 
Since neither the stable boy nor the spectators of this crime 
seem sensible of the enormity they have committed, the 
only act by which I can express the contempt which I feel 
for the meanness of your natures is that of removing my¬ 
self from the company of such low mortals.” 

Having thus delivered himself with the air of a Demos¬ 
thenes, he literally shook the dust from the soles of his 
alpagatas and staggered out into the street. Coincident 
with the departure of the drunkard was the arrival of the 
Jijona motor-lorry. 

The lorry was heavy, with solid tyres. Michelin’s motor 
guide had described the route as: “Cart road bad and 
very indisposed,” and we wondered what the sixteen miles 
would value as experience. We all scrambled in, arrang¬ 
ing our luggage as best we could on our laps or under the 
narrow wooden benches nailed to the lorry’s sides. The 
centre of the lorry was occupied with cargo, in this case 
barrels, some full, some empty, standing on end. We 
thought that we had all fitted in so nicely, but a wail from 
the courtyard drew our attention to an old woman who, 
loaded with parcels and almost weeping with despair, had 
failed to find a seat. We said “Move up” to each other, 
but no moving up was possible. The old man came out in 
anger from the ticket-office. 

“But this is ridiculous,” he shouted; “there is room, 
there are so many seats on the lorry, I sell so many seats, 
therefore there must be room.” 

Slowly the elucidation of the mystery dawned on us. 
Three of our passengers were of such girth that each ought 
in common fairness to have booked two seats for himself. 
So with much effort we squeezed and shoved into the fat 
men until we gained a narrow slit of seat into which the 


180 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


little old woman was dropped. But immediately the active 
pressure was released the resilience of fat reasserted itself, 
and the little old woman spent the first part of the journey 
moaning out. that she was being crushed to death. Most 
of the voyagers were peasants; one or two were travellers 
going to the fiesta; one was dressed in soldier’s uniform, 
but he seemed to be neither officer nor private. We dis¬ 
covered later that he was a veterinary surgeon. Our musi¬ 
cal instrument caused some attention and our fellow voy¬ 
agers smiled at us with sympathy and kindness. 

“Are you artists?” they asked. 

“Yes,” we replied. 

“Then we will come to your concert,” said they. 

The road was indeed “indisposed.” We rolled, rocked, 
and bumped along miles of dusty road, by the side of which 
the trees were so drenched in dust that they were but 
ghosts of themselves; the herbage below seeming like the 
delicate clay work of a magic potter, having no hint of 
green for the eye. Nor can empty barrels be considered 
good travelling companions. If the lorry were toiling up¬ 
hill the barrels sidled down the floor with a seeming leer. 
One snatched one’s toes out of the way without ceremony. 
On reaching the end of the lorry, the barrels spread them¬ 
selves sideways, crushing the knees of the sitters. When 
the lorry reached the top of the hill and began to thunder 
down the new slope the barrels bounced and bumped to 
the other end of the lorry, bruising everybody in their pas¬ 
sage. Finally the young soldier sat on one of the centre 
barrels and tried to quell their antics, without much success. 

The lorry climbed into the mountains, round roads which 
curved like a whiplash. At one spot the young soldier 
remarked: “The motor-bus fell over here once; six of the 
passengers were killed.” 

The sun beat down on the canvas top of the lorry, and 
the large white porous water-jug hanging at the end was 
in constant demand. We halted at a small and lonely 


ALICANTE 


181 


house where beer was for sale. The passengers also bought 
beans pickled in salt and handed them to each other. 

The dusty miles rolled off, at one moment through grey 
cliffs which shone in the evening light, and another over 
deep water-courses, along the bottom of which ran serried 
terraces of vines. Presently a pretty girl, whom we took 
to be the daughter of a wealthy farmer, and who had spent 
the better part of the journey flirting with the young sol¬ 
dier, exclaimed: i 1 Mira! Shishona! ’ ’ 1 

Through a cleft between two mountains we caught a 
glimpse of distant houses clustered up the side of a hill 
towards an old Saracen ruin which gleamed ochreous 
against the evening sky. 

In spite of the presence of a couple of factories, the 
entrance of Jijona from the south is one of the most 
romantic sights we have seen in Spain. Ancient Spanish 
buildings sprang from the edge of a ravine covered with 
prickly pear, and faced a steep cliff, along the precipitous 
face of which ran water-courses. Old houses stood step 
above step, on a hill so steep that the roadways were all 
staircases and the houses had two entrances, the front into 
the lowest story and the back into the upper, and often the 
back-yard was higher than the roof. A white stone bridge 
carried the road with a noble curve across the ravine, and 
round this curve we swung, the passengers waving hands 
and shouting greetings, into the town. 

Our destination was a casa de huespedes (half inn, half 
boarding-house) called “La Vinaigre,” and the name was 
not altogether unsuitable. But our first reception was 
as cordial as we could have wished. Owing to our friend’s 
mattress, which the old hostess had recognized, we were 
welcomed with open arms. 


i “Look! Jijona! 



CHAPTER XXI 


JIJONA—THE FIESTA 

T HE only fiesta we had hitherto experienced in Spain 
had been a small peasant feast during an afternoon 
at Verdolay. We had gone to it; but finding that 
we as foreigners constituted the chief centre of interest, we 
had run away to the seclusion of our house. At the big 
fiesta of Jijona were so many strangers that we were almost 
overlooked. 

The family at the “Vinegar” consisted of an old bent- 



backed father peasant, sandalled; a mother, in black with 
black shawl; several sons, reaching towards mercantile 
gentility owing to the turron factory, which was in the 
cellars of the house; and several daughters, most of whom 
had married personages of importance in the little town. 
In fact the “Vinegar” family was upon the up-grade. They 
promised us a week of unparalleled amusement. 

First, they said the town was crammed with people—a 
182 



JIJONA—THE FIESTA 


183 


most necessary concomitant to Spanish enjoyment. In no 
other country in the world is the gregarious nature of man 
so plainly exhibited. The man who plays his lonely golf 
matched with an imaginary colonel would not be under¬ 
stood ; your solitary pleasurer would find no sympathizers. 
Crowds, crowds, form the oil in the salad of Spanish amuse¬ 
ment. Secondly: that very night the priests were giving a 
free public cinema entertainment. Thirdly: “They will 
loose a cow on the streets to-morrow night. Oh, it is pre- 
cioso. It is a wonderful diversion. The cow gallops, the 
men try to catch her. They are tossed right and left, 
others come to the rescue. Magnificent! Eh?” Fourthly: 
the old drama of the Moors and Christians was to be per¬ 
formed. 

Jijona lies in territory once captured by the Moors. They 
say that the original name was Saracena, and to-day locally 
it is pronounced “Shishona.” It owes its considerable 
wealth to the extensive terrace cultivation of almonds, by 
means of which the hard-working Moors converted the 
mountains from barrenness to fertility. 

“There is a castle of boards erected in the plaza,” said 
the Vinegars; “this will be stormed first by the Moors, 
then by the Christians. It is very luxurious. Not so lux¬ 
urious as last year, perhaps, because the captains of the 
fiesta are not so wealthy as those of last year, and owing 
to the tobacco famine, the Contrabandistas will omit their 
drama of tobacco smuggling. Yet it will exhibit much 
lujo .” 1 

At supper we tasted for the first time the famous turron 
of Jijona. This was manufactured by our hosts. It is a 
crisp, dry, almond sweetmeat, probably Moorish in origin, 
for it is not unlike Halva de Smyrne and carries behind its 
almond flavour a queer but not unpleasant taste resembling 
the smell of an over-heated chair. Supper over, we went 
out to the plaza. The first need of Spanish amusement 


i Luxury. 


184 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


had been fulfilled. The streets were crowded. A few of 
the more sophisticated visitors were even wearing hats. 

At the far end of the plaza, dimly, could be seen the 
wooden castle, in shape not unlike one of those quaint 
woodcuts from an old edition of Froissart; some distance 
in front of it, high in the air, was the sheet on which the 
free “pictures” were to be thrown from the topmost pin¬ 
nacle of the castle. As the time of the performance drew 
near, the people came bringing chairs with them until both 
before and behind the screen the plaza was crammed. The 
performance was not a success. The illumination was dim; 
the sheet stretched high above the people’s heads. In addi¬ 
tion, a young moon in its first quarter intruded from above 
the mountain-tops. This intrusive crescent, shining almost 
through the centre of the sheet, sometimes took the place of 
the heroine’s head, sometimes of the hero’s waistcoat. 
After straining our eyes for a while, having reflected on 
gift-horses and teeth we went back to the Vinegars’ and to 
bed. As we went we wondered what those spectators who 
were on the wrong side of the sheet and who in consequence 
could not read the legends—if they were able to read— 
would construe out of those dim dramas. 

We awoke on the morrow eager to see what the “Studio” 
of our friend was like. Father Vinegar had gone before 
us, but Mother Vinegar took the road and showed us up 
through tortuous and romantic staircases of streets, up—* 
up—until we reached the highest level of the town. But 
our friend’s house was yet higher. We clambered up a 
zigzag path over a widening hill-side to the crest of the 
ridge. There on the top, fronting the ruins of the old 
Saracen fortress, was our friend’s house “El Torre de 
Blay.” It was a long house of one story, backed by a 
round tower of three stories. The tower was claimed to 
be Saracen in origin: it overlooked a walled yard, which 
was filled with chickens, rabbits and turkeys, for the Vine¬ 
gars were using the house during the absence of our friend. 
A pile of almond shells was in the entrada and a back door 


JIJONA—THE FIESTA 


185 


led out into a terraced garden full of pomegranate, pear, 
fig, almond and olive trees and grape vines. Old Vinegar, 
called locally “Pere Chicot,” led us round, discoursing on 
tlie beauty of the house, which was indeed cool, large and 
airy. But the clou of the house Pere Chicot kept till the 
last. With a gesture of profound pride he swung open a 
small door. 

“Senor and Senora,” he exclaimed, “I will warrant that 
there is not a W.C. to compare with this in the whole prov¬ 
ince of Alicante.” 

Mother Vinegar, talking in a high-pitched, querulous 
voice, was complaining of the rise in prices, of the hardness 
of the season. The garden of the Torre, she said, was not 
worth looking after, there were no grapes, and as for the 
almonds, she went on, pointing to a small heap, that was 
the whole crop for the year. She added that only a little 
while ago somebody had broken into the yard and had 
stolen two hundred and fifty pesetas* worth of poultry and 
rabbits. 

It occurred to us that some of her cordiality to us came 
from the fact that she looked on us to make up some of that 
lost money. So I gently led her on to the question of ways 
and means. She said: 

“Oh, El Senor used this place as a working place only. 
He lived and slept at our house, and for that he paid ten 
pesetas a day.” 

Now El Senor (our English friend) had told us that he 
paid seven pesetas. Our suspicions were correct. I am 
afraid that in the end Mrs. Vinegar, like the undertaker 
in Tcheckov’s story, counted us amongst her losses. Her 
manner changed gradually from cordial to chilly: she had 
promised to help me to shop, but she put obstacles in my 
way and also, I believe, tried to prevent us from finding a 
servant. Finally we made an arrangement that Mrs. 
Vinegar should supply us with meals at two pesetas fifty 
each. Remembering that Elias had fed us in Murcia for 
one peseta fifty I struggled to reduce the price to two 


186 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


pesetas for less food, but Mrs. Vinegar said that Jijona 
was far more expensive than Murcia (as a matter of fact 
it was, if anything, cheaper), and that the reputation of 
her house would not stand a lower price. Finally, to her 
disgust, I announced that we could not afford more than 
three meals a week at that rate, and we were accordingly 
scrawled down, heavily underlined, with red ink, amongst 
the stolen chickens and rabbits. 

But the idea of the cow chase through the streets excited 
us. As in the well-known story, the cow turned out to be a 
bull; nor was the chase to be in the narrow winding streets, 
but in the plaza, the entrances of which had been blocked 
up with extempore barricades of wooden beams. The 
women and the less courageous of the men were to fill the 
balconies, and places in a balcony had been found for us 
by the Vinegar girls, who were quite different in manners 
from their parents. The bulls were stabled at the back 
of the town; and, like a wasp in a spider’s web, plunging 
at the ends of long ropes tied to its horns, the bull was 
dragged to the plaza, when it was insinuated into a rough 
bull-pen erected near the castle. There were three bulls, 
and a second was thus dragged up and penned in. The 
third, however, was tied to a tree, and pads, like boxing- 
gloves, were fixed solidly to its murderous horns. Then 
with some precautions the bull was loosened. The game 
was a sort of ticky-touchwood. Home in this case was 
anywhere out of reach of the bull’s tossing capacity: open 
doors, the ironwork of windows, water pipes, trees, the 
barricades of the streets, lamp posts, a fountain—around 
which one could dodge—and a wall topped by a rickety 
paling, and the woodwork of some swing-boats near the 
castle. 

Jan had gone down into the plaza to get some photos. 
From the balcony the game was exciting, though not 
furious. Some of the boys showed considerable pluck; 
and it was amusing to watch the strange concavities shown 
in the back of one running away who thought that the bull 


JIJONA—THE FIESTA 187 

was close behind and who could feel in imagination those 
horns prodding his spine. 

But the fun was not furious enough to bear long watch¬ 
ing from the balcony. So I went down into the square 
and joined Jan. I had several reasons for this action. I 
was bored, and thought it would be more exciting below. 
But the chief idea I had was that by this manoeuvre I would 
be able to introduce myself to Jijona en bloc. I should be 
universally known, and would thus escape the continual 



shrieks and giggles with which strangers greeted my 
appearance. So I went down into the plaza. 

A loud gasp went up from the crowds. 

Some youths ran up to me. 

“Senora, Senora,” they cried, “you mustn’t stay here. 
It is dangerous!” 

“Why?” asked I. 

“But don’t you understand? The bull! He might get 
you.” 

“But,” I answered, “he might get you too.” 

“Oh, but we can run.” 


188 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


“Well, I can run also.” 

At this moment theory turned hurriedly into practice. 
The bull came charging down upon us. Jan and I with a 
number of youths made a run for the wall, clambered on 
to it, and clung there, hanging on its rickety palings, while 
the bull smelt our toes. 

“Curse you! Curse you!” screamed out an old man 
who was dancing with rage on the other side of the pal¬ 
ings. “Get down. Can’t you see that in a minute you’ll 
bring the whole place down? Get off at once.” 

But the boys merely gave him retort for curse. The bull 
turned on to another baiter and dashed away. This boy 
sprang into the branches of a young tree. The bull, going 



full speed, hit the stem of the sapling with his forehead, and 
the youth was shot off, describing a graceful parabola, and 
landing with a thump on to the ground. Gradually the 
game drifted to the other end of the plaza and we came 
down from the fence. 

“Senora,” said an anxious voice, “I have here a bal¬ 
cony. It is quite respectable, for my wife is there. Pray 
do not risk your life any longer.” 

The speaker was the husband of one of the Vinegar girls, 
one of the nicest men we met in Jijona. He was short and 
plump, and even as he spoke to me he gazed anxiously 
towards the end of the plaza. While he was still urging 
me, the bull made a movement in our direction, and he 
bolted. This time we sought shelter in an open doorway, 


JIJONA—THE FIESTA 


189 


accompanied by two priests. One lad tripped and the bull 
rolled him over with its padded horns, but other lads ran 
up, one flapped a handkerchief before the animal’s nose, 
another hung on to its tail. Somehow we could not help 
wondering what would have happened to the bull had 
twenty public schoolboys been loosed in that plaza! 



At last the light faded. First the bull, then the boys 
grew tired. The animal, captured with ropes, was led 
away to become meat for future Jijona dinners—eating a 
playmate, it seemed to me. 

Further north in Spain they have a variant of this game. 


190 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


A young bull is put into a wide circle formed of carts. The 
bull’s horns are not padded, and this game is quite danger¬ 
ous. A Polish painter, a friend of ours, once entered such 
a ring. He was chased by the bull and to escape sprang 
for a cart. He was not quite quick enough. With the 
upward toss the bull thrust a horn through the seat of his 
trousers, as the painter was in mid-air. Luckily the trou¬ 
sers were an old pair, the seat came out wholesale and the 
painter tumbled head first into the cart. He says that for 



the rest of the day he went about with his hat clapped be¬ 
hind him. 

The bull-baiting over, we called upon the doctor to whom 
we carried an introduction from Luis. Then we scram¬ 
bled up to our Torre, taking with us provisions and candles. 
We made up our mattress on the floor and slept the more 
soundly for our hard bed. 

We had one joy at Jijona—there were no mosquitoes, 
and the nights were deliciously cool. Our windows were 
far enough from the ground to allow the most timid of 




JIJONA—THE FIESTA 


191 


Spanish women to sleep secure from robbers. The sun 
streaming in at our windows awoke us before six—we 
dressed and breakfasted, looking down on the town, which 
still lay in the shadow. Immediately beneath our windows 
were two hundred yards of stony hillside; then began the 
houses, small and closely crowded as though they feared 
the rough arid expanse of the towering hills of rock. We 
looked down upon an almost Moorish succession of flat 
roofs, plunging downhill into the valley. The surrounding 
country was like a rough sea suddenly frozen, in front of 
us the mountains seemed almost to curl over. A violet 
smoke was rising from Jijona chimneys, a smoke which 
drifted a sweet scent to our nostrils, a scent of sage and of 
fir. From the middle of the village the church tower 
covered with blue and white tiles suddenly chimed the hour 
with discordant bells. 

Mrs. Vinegar was to take me the round of the shops. 
She had previously tried to impress me with the dreadful 
price of provisions in Jijona, and this time she prevented 
me from buying eggs. The greengrocer’s shop, kept by a 
gay woman named Concha, was only an entrada filled with 
baskets. Mrs. Vinegar had refused to change a note of 
100 pesetas for me, and we discovered later that notes of 
any magnitude greater than twenty-five pesetas are diffi¬ 
cult to change in villages. But Concha changed the money 
cheerfully and earned my gratitude. Opposite Concha’s 
shop, frowning on the main street with grated windows, 
was the prison, of which somebody said: 

“Heavens! The Jijona men are so good that there 
hasn’t been a soul in the prison for the last five years. It 
is full of chickens and rabbits.” 

We bought a frying-pan, having to choose between one 
very small and one very large. The latter was thick in 
rust, and must have been I don’t know how many years 
on the shelves of the shop. We chose it on condition that 
the shopman could get it clean, and he at once put the 
whole of his family to work on it, including a prospective 


192 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


daughter-in-law, a French-African girl just arrived from 
Morocco. The customers were whispering one to another, 
and at last one more hold than the others addressed me: 

“I saw you yesterday go down amongst the bulls. Were 
you not terribly frightened? I thought that my heart was 
going to stop.” 

We went to buy drinking glasses. The china shop was 
deserted and we had to shout loudly before we could get 
anybody to serve us. The woman did not know the price 
of the glasses. 

“But no matter,” she said, “you can pay any time you 
like. And weren’t you terribly frightened yesterday, going 
down into the bulls? I couldn’t draw my breath when I 
saw you jump on to the wall.” 

There were children crowded at the shop door. As we 
came out I heard murmurs, which gradually we made 
out as: 

“La Valiente, La Valiente, La Valiente!” 

I was known by this name during the whole of my stay 
in Jijona. 

On Sunday we dined at the Vinegars’ and in the after¬ 
noon the doctor took us to the Casino. I believe there is 
gambling at these Casinos, but this takes place upstairs, 
and on the ground floor they perform the function of the 
local club. On Sunday afternoons and in the evenings the 
aristocracy of the place collect here to sip ices while the 
local pianist rattles off the latest music which has reached 
the town. 

After supper we walked through the streets, feeling our 
way up and down hill, for lights were few and the streets 
full of rocks and unexpected steps. We heard the sound 
of guitars and at once climbed towards it. At the top of a 
staircase we came to a shop in front of which a family was 
sitting. A woman with a rough voice began to chaff us. 

“Ah, yes,” she exclaimed, “you are the English of the 
Torre de Blay. And the lady is the valiant one who is not 


JIJONA—THE FIESTA 193 

afraid of bulls. Ha ha! What? You are going to see the 
dancing—well, let’s all go.” 

The family heaved itself to its feet, surrounded and 
escorted us down a narrow lane which ended at a platform 
which hung on the cliff’s edge. Three men were sitting on 
the doorstep of a house, two playing guitars, one playing 
the bandurria. A crowd, young men in blouses and girls, 
with light skirts and shawls, were standing about or danc¬ 
ing. Three couples were dancing a Valencian jota. Some 


of the movements of the dance seemed intricate, but they 
danced with a fine natural grace, and there was a beautiful 
balance of body which echoed the movement of the music. 
A woman standing behind me said: 

“Now, Senora, I will teach you the jota one of these eve¬ 
nings. And you will take my baby, because I have lots 
and they say you have none. ’ ’ 

Both on Saturday and on Sunday bull-baiting exhibitions 



194 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


had taken place, but we had not gone to see them. One day 
had been quite sufficient. On Monday morning we were 
awakened by the sounds of music. The local hand was 
parading the streets playing a queer semi-Oriental music. 
As the morning advanced other bands came in until seven 
or eight hands were in full blast, each playing a different 
tune and each trying to drown its rivals with sound. 
Gradually Moors and Christians gathered. The Moors 
came from the Near East and from the Far. The Chief 
and his immediate suite were Bedouin Arabs, and there 
were Turks, Saracens, Hindus, Chinamen, negroes and 
some of uncertain lineage. Girls accompanied each group 
dressed in appropriate Houri costume, carrying bottles 
filled with a liquor which would have pleased Omar rather 
than Mahomet. The Christians included Roman soldiers, 
crusaders, cavaliers and smugglers of 1800. The latter 
were the chief Christian and his retinue. Vivandieres 
attended the Christians with drink no less stimulating than 
that supplied to their Moorish enemies. Moors and Chris¬ 
tians carried large blunderbusses of ancient mode, and all 
day long to the sounds of indefatigable melody they para¬ 
ded the town. It appeared to be the duty of the Moors 
to be comic; they wore big goggles and many had huge 
imitation beards with which, when the heat grew greater, 
they fanned themselves. They pranced and postured 
through the streets while the Christians marched along 
in solemn ranks. Nor did the fiesta end with the going 
down of the sun. With discreet intervals for refresh¬ 
ment, marching and music continued till 2 a.m., at which 
time sleep and a blessed silence fell on Jijona. 

Undeterred by hut four hours 1 rest, punctually at six the 
cacophony of brass began again. By midday crusaders 
and bandsmen, having exchanged helmets and caps, were 
dancing jotas down the principal streets. But a short 
siesta revived them for the principal work of the day: the 
entry of the Moors. At about four in the afternoon the 


JIJONA—THE FIESTA 


195 


performers gathered at the picturesque southern entrance 
of the village, thus symbolizing the direction from which the 
Moors had come. Then group by group, with blunder- 
busses banging off into the air, the Christians retreated 
slowly up the street, going backwards. Last of all the 
Christians went the Contrabandistas, and last of the Con- 
trabandistas the Captain, dressed in a wonderful ancient 
costume of velvet, embroidered with gold, silver and silk, 
and a blanket striped in many colours. Facing him, 
advanced with equal solemnity and noise the chief Moor. 
After some two hours of deafening reports the whole 
troupe was in movement, some forwards, others back¬ 
wards, and had arrived at the wooden castle in the plaza. 
By seven o’clock, at this funereal pace, the Moors were at 
last massed before the castle. 

‘‘Now for the charge and for some fun,” we thought. 
But mounting a profusely decorated horse, the chief Moor 
began a speech. The Contrabandista, evidently a man of 
deeds only, had hired a real actor, dressed in the costume 
of a cavalier, to represent him. For almost an hour ex¬ 
change of dramatic verse continued, after which the Chris¬ 
tians quietly walked out of the castle, and the Moors 
walked in. 

“Good heavens,” thought we, “is that all?” 

With ears deafened from the guns we went home; pass¬ 
ing on the way a booth of green branches in which Moors 
and Christians, overcome either by the heat or by the 
assiduous ministrations of Houri or Vivandiere, were laid 
out on sacks. 

Though officially the day was ended, practically it was 
not. Those who had private stocks of powder continued 
the gunfire till midnight. The bands, their music becoming 
more and more incoherent, played on till two o’clock. 

We decided that we had seen enough fiesta. We stayed 
in our castle and went out sketching in the country to avoid 
the appalling din which rose from the town to our windows. 


196 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


At night there was a modest display of fireworks in the 
plaza, which we were quite content to enjoy from where 
we were. 

After all was over they said to us: 

“Wasn’t it a beautiful fiesta!” 

Outwardly we were forced to agree with them, but in¬ 
wardly we recognized—perhaps with a sense of regret— 
that to enjoy these fiestas as they ought to be enjoyed, that 
is, as a Spaniard enjoys them, requires a sense of values 
and perhaps a nervous organism which we do not possess. 


CHAPTER XXII 


JIJONA—TIA BOGER 

J IJONA lived on almond paste. All around us the grey, 
pallid or zebra striped mountains were terraced, and 
wherever enough earth could be gathered together for 
an almond tree to grow, there it was planted. The turron 
of Jijona, which is made in perfection nowhere else, is a 
very popular sweetmeat all over Spain and even is widely 
appreciated in South America. In Barcelona I have been 
greeted by turron-selling youths who addressed me as La 
Valiente. On the French frontier in a little village we 
found a turron-stall kept by a man in Jijona costume of 
black blouse and pointed hat; but he was a fraud: he had 
never been near Jijona, nor could he speak the Jijona dia¬ 
lect. But the whole life of Jijona was dominated by turron 
marzipan, and the varieties of sweetmeats made from 
almonds. We arrived as the almonds were beginning to 
ripen. Out on the mountains one heard the thrashing of 
the canes amongst the branches as the peasants beat the 
nuts off the almond trees. From the village rose up a 
sound like that of a gigantic typewriter as the women of 
the village sat in the streets in circles and cracked the 
almond shells. In our entrada old Pere Chicot crouched 
most of the day on his haunches, peeling, drying and crack¬ 
ing the almonds from El Senor’s garden. 

In consequence of the turron work we found it very diffi¬ 
cult to get a woman to work for us. Life became difficult. 
The conditions in Jijona were not the same as those in 
Verdolay. In the latter place we could buy excellent char¬ 
coal, but to our surprise we found charcoal difficult to get 
in Jijona. When we did get it, from the proprietor of 


198 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


the local cinematograph theatre, it was so hard that it 
would not burn. Pere Chicot said gruffly, “What are 
almond shells for?” We then tried burning almond shells; 
but they made a poor fire, and an accumulation of shells 
soon put itself out. We wasted one and a half hours try¬ 
ing to fry potatoes on an almond-shell fire. So as long as 
we could not get a woman, we had to live on cold stuff that 
we could buy from the shops: Dutch cheese, and sardines, 
principally. 

At last I thought that I had found a woman. I was 
perched on the watercourse which ran across the face of 
the precipice opposite the entrance of the town. From this 
spot there was an excellent view of Jijona in its most 
romantic, but also in its most plastic aspect. To me came 
a woman walking along the edge of the watercourse, balanc¬ 
ing on her head a large washing-basket. She stopped to 
watch my work, and as was the custom in those early days 
began to talk about the bull episode. 

“Ah, that was a terrible thing to do,” she said. “If I 
had gone down into the plaza, my knees would have turned 
to water.” 

I then asked her how I could get somebody to work for 
me. 

“Why,” she answered, “I’ll come myself, or send some¬ 
body else.” 

She then began to move along her way. The wall of 
the watercourse was about a foot wide; but ten yards fur¬ 
ther along it ceased to curve around the face of the preci¬ 
pice and sprang across a chasm over a narrow bridge. The 
approach to this bridge was guarded by a large polished 
boulder about three feet high, and to get on to the bridge 
one had to clamber over this boulder. I had crossed it on 
hands and knees cautiously, for there was a sheer drop of 
forty or fifty feet below. The woman looked at this boulder 
and turning said to me: 

“That is a nasty spot. I’ll have to be careful there, or 
I’ll drop my washing.” 


JIJONA—TIA ROGER 


199 


With the basket on her head she walked to the boulder 
and began to walk up its slippery side. Balancing herself 
and basket in what appeared a dangerous manner, giving 
little cries of “Aie! Aie! I’m afraid I’ll drop my basket,’’ 
she surmounted the obstacle and strode carelessly across 
the bridge. My heart left my throat to regain its normal 
position and I realized that there is even a fashion in 
“fear.” 

But the woman never came, and for a week we were 
servantless. The pretty girl who had driven out with us 
in the lorry, and who we had imagined to be the daughter 
of a fairly well-to-do farmer, was as a matter of fact our 
nearest neighbour. She lived at the top house of the town. 
Her father was the village dust-cart, and any day could 
be seen walking about the streets bent almost double be¬ 
neath the weight of a huge pannier which he carried on his 
back, into which he flung any object which had no per¬ 
manent right on the high road. Her house was a small 
affair of two rooms only. We put our difficulty to her as 
she was friendly, and to our surprise she said that she 
would come and do it herself. She did arrange that the 
goat with his milk should call upon us; but the Vinegars 
enticed her into their turron factory, and again we were 
in despair. However, the girl had an idea. 

“Why, Mother will do it for you,” she said. 

Mother was an apt-looking spouse for the dust-cart, and 
was considered, we heard, the dirtiest woman in the vil¬ 
lage. Her foggy blue eyes showed white all round them, 
and she threw up her lips like a biting horse when she 
spoke Castilian (which she did very badly). I don’t know 
why she made me think of the Red queen in Alice, but her 
silhouette was not unlike, and she had a queer trick of 
being in the house one instant, and in the next of having 
quite vanished—which was Red-queenlike. She was called 
“Aunt Roger” in the village, because of her ruddy hair. 
Aunt Roger cleared up the mystery of the Jijona fuel. 
She made bargains with boys, who wandered out over the 


200 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


hills, and returned looking like walking haycocks under a 
load of branches of mountain pine and other coniferous 
shrub. From then on we cooked over large bonfires built 
on the square hearth which was in our largest room. 

Tia Roger was elusive in small matters, as she was in 
larger ones. She had a hasty Spanish way of agreeing 
at once to save herself the trouble of understanding my 
language, and we never knew whether she would come or 
no. She drew our pay without demur, but if an occasion 
offered for other employment she took it. We would re¬ 
turn home at eleven o’clock worn out with a hard day’s 
painting, to find the place uncleaned, no fire alight, no food 
either bought or prepared. This would entail on our part 
a rush down the steep hill into the town, to search for food. 
Probably on the way we would discover Tia Roger sitting 
amongst a circle of gossiping and pleased women, indus¬ 
triously cracking almonds. She would show no signs of 
conscious sin, but would grin and nod at us as we passed. 
Then we had to scramble again up to our eyrie under the 
full heat of the Mediterranean sun. 

Tia Roger had many children. Her eldest daughter was 
married to a man who for some time puzzled us. We first 
saw him wandering about the upper streets of the old town 
during the fiesta. He carried an elaborate pair of sand¬ 
wich boards. On the front was the well-known picture, 
“St. Veronica’s Handkerchief,” and on the back an oleo¬ 
graph representing two conventional angels—golden hair, 
nightdress, and wings. Both pictures were surrounded by 
flat wooden frames fretworked in the hideous art-nouveau 
manner. He wandered about thus, enclosed, as it were a 
slab of humanity between two slices of divinity; but we 
could not imagine what his purpose was. We imagined 
that he filled a semi-religious post, something connected 
with the priests, and their fiesta, and their cinema, and bull 
chasings. But on the fourth day of the fiesta, this wan¬ 
dering, apparently purposeless man tripped over a wash¬ 
ing-basket. His language at once put to flight all our ideas 


JIJONA—TIA ROGER 


201 


of his religious functions, it issued straight from a nature 
by no means purged of old Adam, despite its devotional 
enclosure. Later, he fell over me as I was sketching, and 
he cursed me with gusto. I then saw he was blind. This 
had not been apparent to us earlier, for he took the rough 
and precipitous streets of Jijona at an extraordinary speed. 

One day we saw him still wandering to and fro, but the 
pictures had disappeared. A cage was on his back, and in 
the cage, balancing against the joggle and movement of 
his walk, was an uncomfortable hen. We had become more 
accustomed to the Jijona speech by this time, and the tickets 
which the pictures had hidden were plainly visible in his 
hands. He was running a private lottery at three chances 
* ‘ a little bitch. ’ ’ I took thirty tickets for the hen, and gave 
fifteen of them to Tia Roger, but we pulled blanks. His 
next venture was a bedroom looking-glass, the stand of 
which stuck out from his back in an ungainly fashion. It 
must have needed considerable ingenuity to keep his small 
village clientele sufficiently desirous to ensure for him any 
sort of a living. 

His wife learned that I had put him into one of my 
sketches. She hurried to the Torre de Blay, carrying her 
child, and accompanied by a horde of women friends to see 
“The Portrait.” Her disappointment was great to find 
that he was but a minute figure in a street landscape. She 
told me that her husband had lost his sight ten years be¬ 
fore in a street quarrel. His opponent had slashed a knife 
across his eyes. For this the law exacted no penalty. But 
she had drawn no lesson from her husband’s misfortune. 
Her baby was in a bad condition, flies, dust and exposure 
to the sun were working wickedly on the child’s eyes, and 
even then early blindness appeared to be threatening. But 
it seemed to us that many of the more ignorant Spanish 
were careless of their children’s eyesight. Blindness is 
rampant, but blindness leads to beggary; and beggary 
accompanied by blindness is a profitable pursuit. Possibly 
a woman may say, “Little Juan seems to be going blind. 


202 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Well, that’s a comfort, he will be settled in life anyhow.’* 

Jijona had two other blind men. The one made a living 
by selling cigars from a glass case strapped to his chest. 

We were sitting in the entrada of the Vinegars’ on the 
first day of the fiesta. The curtain was pushed slowly 
aside and through the opening crept a pathetic figure. It 
was that of an old man; his eyes were sightless and sup¬ 
purating, a straw hat with a torn brim shaded his heavy 
face, in one hand he grasped an aged guitar, in the other a 
stick with which he explored the entrada for a chair. Jan 
quickly got out of his chair for fear that the blind man 
should sit down on his lap. The man found the chair with 
his stick, and trembling with the pain of movement took a 
seat. Adjusting the guitar, with stiff fingers he rasped 
the strings which gave out a sound, thin as though withered 
by extreme age. With exercise his fingers strengthened, 
until from the decrepit instrument he plucked a melody 
from which one might imagine that the blind in Maeter¬ 
linck’s play were dancing to solace their loneliness. The 
almost macabre dance came to an end, then striking out a 
new set of chords he broke into a Spanish song. His voice 
was an instrument as worn out as the guitar. 

He ceased his heartrending performance, collected his 
meed of halfpence; I spoke to him, and he broke into an 
hysterical laugh of joy. 

“You have returned, you have returned,” he cried. 

“It is El Senor that he takes you for,” explained one 
of the girls. “He was very good to him. The old man 
recognizes the English accent.” 

We explained to him his mistake, and the delight faded 
from his poor old face, and the blank expressionless look 
of the blind came back. Slowly he turned to the entrance 
and his tapping, which led him away down the street. Thus 
he pursued his trade, feeling his way from door to door, 
entering any one that was open, seating himself upon the 
first unoccupied chair which he could find: few could have 
been hard-hearted enough to deny his unspoken pleading. 


JIJONA—TIA ROGER 


203 


One evening we met him in the upper town. . . . An 
accident had happened, and his guitar was opened out like 
an old hoot; it still held together at the handle, but at the 
front of the instrument the sound-board and back had be¬ 
come detached from the sides. In a clumsy fashion the 
hurt had been bound up with string. We asked him what 
had happened. He did not reply, but cried out with a high- 
pitched, half-crazy laugh. Then standing astraddle in the 
precipitous street he began to pluck at the strings as 
though the guitar could answer for him. The thin voice 
of it had now sunk to a mere ghost of a sound, the murmur 
of a summer freshet might well have drowned its plaintive 
whisper. Then turning he made his way downhill. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


JIJONA—A DAY’S WORK 

I T was a toss-up which would arrive first: the sun shoot¬ 
ing its long level rays over the mountain-top through 
our windows, or Tia Roger’s daughter hammering on 
the door with the milk, warm and frothy, in a jug. Either 
the one or the other aroused us from our mattress on the 
floor—for we had dispensed quite comfortably with the 
complications of a bed. Possibly our night had been rest¬ 
less, for inadvertently I had imported a host of fleas into 
the house. They had come from the garden, from a small 
spot near an outhouse door, where there was a fascinating 
view, and I had stood there one morning with bare legs and 
feet admiring the scene. When I had returned to the 
house, I had noticed a strange blackish discoloration on 
my ankles, and stooping had discovered to my horror that 
hordes of hungry fleas were crawling up my legs. I had 
jumped into a basin of water, but many had escaped. From 
that moment the house was never clear of them, and our 
nights were sometimes disturbed. We suspect that Pere 
Chicot kept his rabbit skins in the outhouse. 

We got out of bed either at the call of the sun or of the 
milk; and as we were dressing we watched the purple and 
green mists of night clearing off the valley and from the 
town below us. Breakfast was a simple affair—tea and 
dry bread and grapes. Spanish coffee is expensive and 
bad, cocoa we did not find, and butter and jam were unpro¬ 
curable. For the boiling water we could not go to the 
trouble of building a bonfire, so in spite of the expense of 
spirit we used a methylated spirit stove. This Jan had 
bought in Murcia. The shopman had ill understood Jan’s 

204 


JIJONA—A DAY’S WORK 


205 


attempts to make his needs known. “Lampara para 
alcool ” 1 had elicited no response, but at last, driven by- 
repeated requests with variations, explanations, band wav- 
ings, and so on, intelligence bad brightened the shopman’s 
face. 

“Ah, Senor,” be had cried, “I understand you now. 
What you require is a ‘little bell.’ ” 

So the kettle sang daily over “little bell,” but this morn¬ 
ing, Tia Roger having forgotten to purchase alcohol over¬ 
night, it looked as if w r e were to breakfast on goat’s milk 
alone. But an idea occurred to me. El Senor, when be 
bad transferred bis major residence to Murcia, bad left 
some furniture and much litter in El Torre de Blay. 
Amongst the Utter were odd bottles which bad contained 
toilet lotions, one was half full. Was there not a chance 
then that it was alcoholic? I routed out the bottle. The 
smell told me nothing. Practical experiment was the only 
thing. Imagination was rewarded. “Little bell” worked 
as well on hair-wash as with any other fuel. 

We ate our simple breakfast at an ancient refectory 
table, the top hewn from the width of a large tree, the legs 
curved and carved like those in Viking pictures. Then we 
set to packing up paint and brushes, and the preparing of 
sketch-boxes. Leaving the things untidy for Tia Roger 
to clear, we set off on our respective ways, I down into the 
old town, Jan out across the mountains. Jijona was a maze 
of zigzag streets. In the morning it was almost manless, 
but women went to and fro on their household errands, and 
the children followed me in swarms. Standing about in 
the streets were small coops, enclosing either a chicken or 
a turkey, while the queer lean Egyptian cats, with rat-like 
tails, slunk along the walls, vanishing like ghosts at any 
attempt to stroke them. Even the kittens of a few days 
old spat at a proffered pat as though at a dog. I was 
bound for the street near the monastery which, with its 


i Spirit lamp. 


206 TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 

blue-tiled roof, brought the eastern end of Jijona to a 
full stop. 

As soon as I had settled down the questions began. They 
were the usual Spanish questions such as one had heard in 
Verdolay, and many of the answers I knew now by heart. 
But one woman behind me said something new. 

“It is an English Senora. She is painting. All the 
English people paint, for there have been other English 
here—El Senor, and his friends—and they, too, painted. 
It is strange, indeed, that a whole nation should be thus 
gifted. Also all the English are very rich, for they come 
here from a long distance, and they paint pictures, and 
all that is very expensive. Another thing that I can tell 
you about the English is that they are all very tall. Every 
Englishman that I have seen (she had seen four) is much 
taller than we Spanish are. It does not matter that I am 
saying this out loud because La Dona does not understand 
Valenciam).” 

While I was working this morning there was a continual 
sound of squealing pigs. Men’s voices mingled with those 
of the pigs, urging them to be quiet. The sound came from 
a high-walled enclosure to which the entrance was an arch¬ 
way closed by a massive wooden door. Then along came a 
goat-herd leading his flock. But as soon as the herd came 
opposite to this door it refused to pass it. With shouts, 
curses, and stones the man urged the goats along. In little 
quick rushes, thus urged on, one by one the goats dashed 
past the door and on down the road. But two refused the 
passage perilous. They made sneezing noises of protesta¬ 
tion, but nothing would induce them to move. In despair 
the man at last had to bring all his goats back and take 
them to the hills by some other route. Later I realized 
that the door which these intelligent animals would not 
pass was the slaughter-house. 

Old men, dressed in the ancient Jijona costume of black 
blouse and black velvet hat with turned-up brim and pointed 
crown—kept on to the head by an elastic at the back—! 


JIJONA—A BAY’S WORK 


207 


would address me in a patois impossible to understand. As 
the sketch neared completion my audience became excited. 

“Ha Pintado tod’! tod’! tod’!” 1 they exclaimed. They 
searched the picture for the smaller details, the strings of 
red peppers hanging from the balconies especially delighted 
them. Indeed, they gave my pictures titles because of some 
minute detail. 

“What is she doing?” a new-comer exclaimed. The 
answer was “The fig tree.” I was astonished, because I 
could see no fig tree in the whole sketch. At last one of 
my audience pointed to one tiny branch of green projecting 
over a wall. 

Jan had four directions to choose from. North and south 
led him across a flattish plain seamed with deep water¬ 
courses, east and west took him into the mountains. To 
the east the mountains were grey bare stone, almost un¬ 
cultivated; to the west the mountains went steeper and 
steeper, ending in a high ridge, at the foot of which was a 
queer leprous country, the earth spotted all over with 
lichens and looking as though mouldy. Wherever he went 
were the terraces and almond trees; and lonely little farms 
were perched high up on the slopes. Terrible little places 
those farms were for the doctor, for, if any one were ill in 
them, there was often no means of approach other than 
miles of climbing on foot. But all across the mountains, 
incongruous enough in that landscape of primitive agri¬ 
culture where the plough was but a stake with an iron 
spike, and where no roads were, went standards carrying 
wires of electricity. On the standards, deaths’-heads were 
painted to scare off the inquisitive child. 

Jan had not only to contend with sun and flies. Shadow 
was even more difficult to find at Jijona than at Verdolay; 
the almond as a shade tree is negligible. It was hot set¬ 
ting out, but it was hotter coming back. One did not delay 
much after half-past ten, but, whether the sketch were 
finished or no, one packed up one’s things and set off home- 

i “She has painted everything, everything, everything!” 



208 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


ward. As one walked one could feel the heat of the ground 
through the soles of the alpagatas. There were reputed 
to be scorpions in the mountains, and it was as well to be 
careful when taking a seat or when picking up some paint¬ 
ing implement dropped to the ground. But Jan never saw 
one. The peasants said that if he were stung the best 
thing to do was to plunge the stung part—usually a finger 
—into a raw egg; when the yolk had turned black, a fresh 
egg was to be substituted. 

We were both back in good time on this day, because we 
were to lunch with the doctor and his wife. They had 
promised us a truly Spanish meal. Here is the menu: 

1. Smoked uncooked ham. 

2. Hors d’oeuvre, olives (cured in anis and mint), pink 
tomatoes (a Jijona specialty), cucumber, and orange- 
coloured sausage. 

3. Soup. 

4. A stew of chicken, potatoes and garbanzos. (Gar- 
banzos, or chick-peas, look something like dried nasturtium 
seeds. They are cooked like haricot beans, and taste like 
a blend of haricot bean and lentil. They are a very favour¬ 
ite Spanish vegetable.) 

5. Cold fish and mayonnaise. (The mayonnaise was made 
from almond oil, lemon juice and hard-boiled egg, and was 
extremely delicate in flavour.) 

6. Fried ham and grilled tomatoes. 

7. Turron and almond paste sweets. 

8. Yellow melon and muscatel grapes. Brandy. 

9. Iced coffee (brought in by a boy from the Casino). 

The doctor’s wife asked me if it were true that English 

people did not like questions. I said personally we did not 
mind questions, but that in England direct intimate ques¬ 
tions were generally avoided. 

“But,” said the doctor’s wife in amazement, “if you 
wish to find out something about anybody, how do you do 
so? And how do you carry on conversations?” 

The meal over, we toiled slowly up again to El Torre, 


JIJONA—A DAY’S WORK 


209 


taking the hill in as leisurely a manner as we could. Tia 
Roger’s daughter was sitting on our doorstep eating grapes. 
As we passed she held the bunch out to us. 

“Les Gusta?” 1 she said. 

“Buen aproveche,” we replied. 

Before their gateway, the two aged men and the one old 
woman sat, as they did from morning till night, plaiting 
an everlasting rope of esparto grass. 

We had acquired the siesta habit, so lay down until four 
o’clock. Then, as the dinner had rather disorganized our 
desire to paint, Jan and I went for a walk. We clam¬ 
bered down through the town, passed out by the southern 
entrance, across the bridge, and clambered up the hill oppo¬ 
site. At a long open washing-place, women were on their 
knees beating and scrubbing clothes with the Spanish soap 
which will not lather; amongst them, working as hard as 
the rest, was a child of five years old. 

We skirted the line between the mountains, and the flat 
and plain for about two miles, then Jan took a path leading 
away from the mountains. We came out into the most 
fantastic scenery of its kind I have ever seen. In the 
winter the torrential rains burst on the mountains and the 
water rushing down had scooped deep clefts in the earth 
of the plain. The ground itself appeared to be in layers 
of various colours, and these layers falling in one above 
the other had striped the sides of the deep canyon purple 
blue, white, orange and red. The water had cut out of the 
clayey earth a hundred fantastic shapes—I have seen 
photographs of the Grand Canyon of Colorado, this was 
like them on a small scale; at one place the clay was harder 
and the water dripping down had carved the cliff-side like 
great organ pipes or like the columns of an Egyptian tem¬ 
ple. In the deep bottoms of the canyon were vine terraces; 
and further down flat, irrigated fields of tomatoes, of herb¬ 
age or of vegetables. Little farm-houses sheltered under 
the mud cliffs, and on the circular threshing-floors almonds 


l“Would you like them?’ 



210 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


and red peppers were spread out to dry in the sun. In one 
place a man had scooped his dwelling out of the cliff-side. 
These cave dwellings are common enough. At Verdolay 
was a whole colony of them, and the cavemen were reputed 
to be thieves and vagabonds, and the members were de¬ 
spised by the peasants proper. At the end of the ravine 
or barranca we came to a many-arched bridge which tow¬ 
ered high above our heads, and clambering up by a zig¬ 
zag track found ourselves on the Alicante road. 

In appearance this country is very deceptive. It appears 
arid, almost desolate, but the mountains are covered with 
almond trees, which for all their scanty foliage bear valu¬ 
able crops, while the plain hides its richness in ravines a 
hundred feet or more below the level of its surface. 

We arrived home to find a stranger dressed in black 
clothes, but with an official cap on his head, sitting on a 
stone seat before our door. He was reading a book, and 
as we came up he bowed and said that he hoped his pres¬ 
ence was not distasteful to us. We, of course, in the fash¬ 
ion of Spanish courtesy, put our whole home at his disposal, 
and invited him indoors. He demurred in the correct 
fashion, but on a second invitation came in with us. In the 
long entrada Pere Chicot was looking out through the back 
door and shaking his head at the garden. 

“There’s another tree dying,’’ he said. “All the trees 
are dying, and the vines won’t bear. You can’t do any¬ 
thing without water.” 

‘ ‘ But is there no water at all ? ” we asked. 

“Ay,” replied Pere Chicot, “there used to be the right 
to two hours of water once a fortnight. But the owners 
sold it. They wanted money and it was worth many hun¬ 
dreds of pesetas.” 

Our visitor was very interested in the house, for he con¬ 
fided in us that there was a housing shortage in Jijona, like 
that in the rest of the world. He was chief of the munici¬ 
pal officers, dust-cart, water-supply, electric light and so 


JIJONA—A DAY’S WORK 


211 


on. He had just come from Toledo, and the only place he 
could find in Jijona was not nearly large enough for his 
family. 

“This would just suit me,” he said, peering into room 
after room, ‘ ‘ seven rooms; and they say that St. Sebastian 
used to live here. Did you know that?” 

His eye was attracted by the guitar of El Senor, which 
we had brought with us. 

“And you an aficionados of the guitar,” he exclaimed. 
“I, too, have played in my time.” 

We pressed him to play. 

“No, no; indeed I would like to, hut I may not. You 
see, my wife’s father died a week ago, and it would seem 
very wicked if I were to play, or to sing.” 

Jan played him a farouka which he had learned from 
Bias. 

‘ ‘ It seems a good guitar, ’ ’ said the man. 

He picked it up, and fingered the chords. Then he went 
to the door and peered round it to see if Pere Chicot had 
gone home. 

“I might sing you something if you won’t tell any one,” 
said the chief of the municipal officers. ‘ ‘ But I will sing it 
in a very low voice, so that it will be less disrespectful to 
my wife’s father.” 

He sang, in a hoarse unmusical whisper, a guajiras. 

“I like the guajiras and also the tango,” said he. “You 
see, I did my military duty in Cuba, and I learned many 
over there.” 

Here are three of the songs he sang: 

“I will never marry, 

For as a bachelor I am gay, 

I have money to spend, 

I live like a general all day. 

And if I come to marry, 

Though I may be rich, 

I shall have to lower my crest, 


212 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Like ‘Barrabas’ the cock, 

But the bachelor is 

Like God painted by Peter.” 

“On a serene night 
The sad lament was heard 
Of a poor soldier, wounded 
And covered with blood and sand. 

For the ambulances were full, 

And the Red Cross doctors were busy. 

At the sight of his oozing blood 
The brave soldier prayed 
That death should overtake him, 

For no one could assist him. ’ ’ 

“At breakfast one morning 
A wise man said, sighing, 

That women in weeping 
Are false as are traitors. 

This has oft been ignored. 

But I’ve seen and I know 
That the tears of a woman, 

As down they are falling, 

Make naught but deception 
For the man who supports her.” 

As he went on he began to forget his father-in-law, and 
in a short while he was bawling indecent tangos at the top 
of his voice. He showed no signs of departure, so I began 
to prepare for supper. I lit the bonfire which Tia Roger 
had laid in the wide hearth-place, placed over it a three- 
legged trivet of iron and on the trivet our huge saucepan 
full to the brim with olive oil. We then made use of a 
Spanish custom. We asked him to supper with us. This 
he was forced by Spanish custom to refuse, and as we did 
not repeat the invitation he had to make his compliments— 
which he did with the greatest courtesy—and go home. 

After supper, as our bread supply was short, we felt 


JIJONA—A DAY’S WORK 


213 


our way down the hill in the dark and down the staircases 
of streets to the shop of Manuel Garcia. Garcia and his 
wife sold bread at one fat dog cheaper than the other shops. 
The bread was quite as good as any other, it had a very 
white powdery kind of consistency, baked in flat loaves 
with a very hard, anasmic crust. The Garcias had showed 
us one of the economical devices which were in current use. 
We had for some days bought candles at this shop, but Mrs. 
Garcia said: 

“Why do you spend all this money on candles? Here 
is a thing much better, and much cheaper. You first pour 
water into a cup or bowl until half-way up, then fill to the 
top with olive oil. Float one of these on the top of the oil, 
and set fire to it. There you have a light at half the cost 
of candles.’’ 

The box she handed to us was full of pieces of cork 
through which a wick had been thrust. On the top of the 
box was the name of the device “little-lamps-little-boats” 
and a picture of the Virgin. We stepped back in our illu¬ 
mination to the most ancient of methods—the old Roman 
conquerors of Spain must have illuminated their villas in 
this way. “Little-lamps-little-boats” had probably given 
light to the halls of the Saracen castle which now was but 
a few crumbling masses of slowly disintegrating cement. 
It was curious to think that one-half of Jijona was lit by 
electric light, the other by this antique device, and that 
there was practically nothing between. Mrs. Garcia had 
urged us to the stewing of garbanzos. 

The Garcias were go-ahead Spaniards. Starting from 
very small origins, they had begun a small turron factory 
in a back room. Not content with making turron alone, 
they had peddled it all over the Balearic Isles. Gradually 
they had prospered, and the whole upper part of the house 
was now factory, the entrance to the factory being higher 
up the hill in a back street. Yet they remained simple 
people, sitting, in the evenings, on their doorstep gossip- 


214 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


ing, while the flaxen-haired daughter, sixteen years old, 
painted with a toothpick dipped in dye eyes and noses on 
sugar pigs and cats. 

“We had a hard time at first,” said Mrs. Garcia. “In 
Majorca the people were very jealous of us, and often very 
rude. They would tell us to go back to our own district; 
they used to laugh at our speech, though God knows they 
can’t speak proper Spanish themselves.” 

This inter-district jealousy seems characteristic of Spain. 
The man from Toledo laughed at the Jijona people; the 
people of Jijona called those of Murcia “gipsies”; the 
people of Murcia say that the Jijona folk are mere unculti¬ 
vated mountaineers; Catalan and Castilian are in semi¬ 
enmity. Each person that one spoke to lauded the beau¬ 
ties and the food of his own district at the expense of other 
places. All about Jijona they would have nothing hut 
maleguenas and Valencian jotas. The other varieties of 
Spanish music they were not interested in. 

But the Garcias were progressive people. They had 
made a success of their Balearic venture, and now had a 
stall in the market of Alicante. This was kept by a sister- 
in-law. Garcia and his wife were making preparations to 
go to the great fair at Albacete. The shop was full of 
large bales done up in straw matting, boxes and crates of 
sweets and of turron. They would go by road, for it was 
cheaper, and only about a hundred miles away. 

“That is a queer town,” said Garcia. “There are gates 
to the walls, and at a certain hour they shut the gates, and 
if you are outside you stay outside till the morning.” 

Mrs. Garcia wanted me to paint her portrait. If she 
would have posed to me in the ordinary, peasant, workaday 
dress I would have done it with pleasure. But she had a 
fine fashionable modern silk dress of black and she wanted 
to pose in this. I managed to put off the proposal until 
the time of her departure was too close. She went away 
unsatisfied. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


JUONA—THE GOATHERDS 

M URCIA could be counted as unmusical, in Verdolay 
one heard either a gramophone of the little Senor, 
or the piano banged by the girls who lived in the 
topmost house of the village. In Jijona, on the contrary, 
almost every evening could be heard the sound of the guitar 
or of that strange Eastern singing of Spain. Young men 
sat on the edge of the cliff below the Saracen castle and 
thumped two or three chords from a guitar for half the 
night long. It had a delight, analogous to that which the 
tom-tom gives, a delight drawn from the hypnotism of 
inexorable rhythm. But save for the commandant of the 
municipal officers, who was a stranger, we had made the 
acquaintance of none of the musicians until one afternoon 
the goatherds perched themselves in the shadow beneath 
our walls. 

We were taking a siesta when the sound of thrumming 
roused us from the half sleep which the afternoon gives. 
Jan exclaimed: 

“That music sounds quite near.” 

He jumped up and looked out of the window. On a 
narrow ledge of flat rock at the foot of the wall three men 
were sitting in the shadow of the house. Two had guitars, 
and all along the wall of the garden a number of goats were 
lying down or were browsing on the small weeds which 
sprouted between the rocks. On the hill-side the kids were 
engaging one another in mock battle, rearing up in feint, 
with the most dainty of gestures, or interlocking their 
infantile horns. 

We slipped on our clothes, and crawling out by the gar- 
315 


216 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


den door, the opening of which was only about four feet 
high, we joined the goatherds in their patch of shadow. 

“Buenos dias,” said Jan. “I, too, love the guitar.’’ 

“Si, Senor,” answered one of the herds, “through the 
windows we have heard you playing.” 

One of the men was thin but wore an enormous pagoda¬ 
like sombrero of straw, one was a boy of eighteen with a 
huge moustache, the third was an old man with a large nose, 
the wrinkles on his face drawn more deeply than any we 
have before seen. Their guitars were poor instruments 
and the strings were broken and knotted together, in con¬ 



sequence of which little bits of stick were tied across the 
arm of the instrument in order to clamp the strings down 
to the fingerboard below the knotted parts. As the strings 
break and are repaired, this stick is moved up the finger¬ 
board until the strings are too short to play upon. Jan 
crawled through the small door and brought out the big 
white guitar. The thin man handled it with reverence. 

“I know the instrument,” he said. “It is El Senor’s. 
It is a good instrument, but he has a better. A big brown 
one which is a marvel. He must be very rich. They say 
he gave more than two hundred pesetas for it.” 







JIJONA—THE GOATHERDS 217 

He played on it for a moment, but soon lianded it back 
to Jan. 

“I’d rather play on my old one,” he said. “I’m not 
afraid of it, and I can knock it about as I like.” 

All three were dressed in cotton shirts and pants, tied 
at the ankle with tape, over these they wore cotton coats 
and trousers; when the weather was very hot they dis¬ 
pensed with the trousers. Their feet were bare of stock¬ 
ing, but their shoes were heavy; woven by themselves out 
of esparto grass, very Oriental in shape with turned-up, 
pointed toes. On their backs were sacks containing esparto 
grass and half-fashioned sandals. Each possessed a long, 
heavy, crook’d stick shod with an iron point. 

All too soon they said that they must be moving on. 
“But come down to the street of the soap house, top side, 
this evening, and we’ll have a dance and singing.” 

I had sketched in this street. It was on the steepest part 
of the hill and ran almost horizontally across, so that the 
front door of the upper houses were on a level with the 
roofs of the lower ones. The roadway was divided along 
the centre, one-half being some twenty feet above the other; 
a low parapet protected the drop. It was lucky that the 
dwellers in the upper part of the street were sober 
Spaniards. 

We found, as usual, the party seated on chairs in the 
middle of the street, near a small electric light; some of 
the men were sitting along the parapet. We were greeted 
by an old, but very large woman who groaned all the eve¬ 
ning with rheumatism. The girls were in their best dresses 
of pale coloured skirt and embroidered paisley patterned 
shawls. A long silence followed our arrival. We were 
waiting for a player who was the best in the village. He 
could not come, but sent his brother instead, who played 
well, but was left-handed. Three guitars and a guitarron 
formed the orchestra. 

Thrum, thrum, thrum, went the guitars, while across the 
deeper chords the little guitarron, with its strange tuning, 


218 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


threaded a shrill pattern of monotonous arpeggios. The 
music of Spain has something fundamental about it. It 
has a hint of the heart-beat of the universe. The rich, 
pulsating rhythm of it seems to set the air flowing in waves 
like those in a disturbed pool. It seems to speak of some¬ 
thing ideally simple, to create an harmonious forgetful¬ 
ness. A girl sitting amongst us threw back her head and 
sang. Her voice carried the sad minor cadences of the 
eternal East; it was pitched queerly in the throat and wailed 
across the still night like the voice of a passionate soul. 

“When I am dead a hundred years, 

And when the worms have eaten me, 

The signs you find in my dead bones, 

Will show that I have worshipped thee. 

When I am dead a hundred years.” 

The song began with a long-drawn-out aie-e-e, which ran a 
gamut of strange, almost creepy modulations, the guitars 
slowed down their tempo, but when the last echo of the 
song had died amongst the hills, the instruments took up 
once more the remorseless beat of the malaguena. 

Again she sang: 

“New pain drives out old pain, 

New grief drives out old grief, 

One nail drives out another nail, 

But love to love gives no relief. 

New pain drives out old pain, 

Aie-e-e. ...” 

Once more she sang: 

“Your eyes like double evils are, 

Black as is the dark of Hades, 

And you have to cover them 
The ebon thickets of your lashes. 

Your eyes like double evils are.” 




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JIJONA—THE GOATHERDS 219 

The guitars beat up the rhythm once more and then a 
man began to sing: 

“In your eyes there is a sky, 

Your mouth with heaven itself can vie, 

A garden blooms whene’er you smile, 

But in your breast’s a crocodile . 1 
In your eyes there is a sky.” 

Again he sang: 

“The only love which I discovered, 

Like black gunpowder reacted; 

Fire, explosion, light; then after . . . 

Followed ashes, silence, darkness. 

The only love which I discovered.” 

By this time a large number of men and girls had 
gathered. 

“Vamos!” they cried. “Let’s have a jota. Come on, 
Perico, play something that we can dance to.” 

The guitar-players changed their tempo, the little gui- 
tarron beat out with a more insistent though more flexible 
rhythm. The jota has a beat which is partly the beat of 
the bar, partly that of the phrase. This is common in 
Spanish music and has points of resemblance with early 
European music generally. 

Three girls and three of the youths lined up face to face, 
and soon the dancers were swinging to and fro over the 
uneven roadway. There is an agile grace in the jota. We 
w r atched it with delighted eyes. But the old rheumatic 
woman did not look pleased. 

“That girl,” she muttered to me, nodding her head at 
one of the dancers, “she has no right to dance. She is 
apunto. You know,” she went on, noting my perplexed 
expression, “she is expecting a baby soon. It is very 
wrong of her to dance. ’ 9 


i Crocodile is Spanish slang for a false lover. 



220 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


The dancers moved with flexible rhythm, snapping their 
fingers with the music, and their shadows, flung on the wall 
by the dim electric light, caricatured their movements. The 
guitars beat on, creating an atmosphere of careless joy 
which seemed to bring us into more sensitive contact with 
the Spaniards than ever we had been before. We wonder 
if civilization has anything to give to these people. They 
live simple, straightforward and pleasant lives, tempered, 
it is true, by sickness and pain and sometimes by privation; 
but it would be a rash man who would promise to give them 
greater store of valuable things than they already have. 
The fact that most cannot read does not hamper them very 
much. They have wisdom stored up in a thousand witty 
proverbs, and for their leisure they have the guitar and 
their songs. 

What a wonderful instrument the guitar is! The sim¬ 
plest of all instruments for the learner, a few days’ prac¬ 
tice makes him so that he can play as do the generality of 
these herdsmen. Then one can hypnotize oneself with the 
sonorous rhythm of repeated chords. But if one wishes to 
go further, the range and variety of the guitar is inex¬ 
haustible. It has as many moods as nature and is as diffi¬ 
cult to conquer. Sarasate, they say, gave up the guitar 
because it was so difficult. But the guitar in the hands of 
the master is the finest of all instruments. Of single port¬ 
able instruments it alone is complete; it alone is fully satis¬ 
fying. We English do not know the guitar. Outside of 
Spain it has never been played. And the Spanish music 
made for the guitar . . . like life itself with its interwoven 
themes of sadness and of joy; with mournful melody accom¬ 
panied by strange gay accompaniment, the words often in 
strange contrast with the melodic theme. There is no 
native music in Europe which has the range, the variety, 
and the depth of feeling possessed by that of Spain. 

We tore ourselves away while yet they were dancing; 
for we remembered that 5.30 was our rising time. The thin 
goatherd, who wore the enormous hat in the daytime, took 



THE VALENCIAN JOTA DANCED BY THREE COUPLES 









































JIJONA—THE GOATHERDS 


221 


us into Iris house and gave us a drink. The baby was in 
its cradle, its face carefully tucked under the sheet. The 
aguadiente which he poured out for us was strong and 
harsh to the taste; and one was grateful for the glass of 
water which it is customary to drink afterwards. 

As we were getting ready for bed, we could still hear 
the sounds of the guitars and the cries of the dancers on 
the calm air of the night. 

The goatherds used to come almost every afternoon to 
the foot of our castle, and we gave up the siesta habit in 
their favour. 

I made the acquaintance of one other goatherd in Jijona. 
I was painting in a street near the Garcias’ shop. When 
the picture was nearly complete, I wished for a figure and 
asked an old man to pose for me. He was nearing eighty, 
and his face was a map of wrinkles, with a mountain of 
nose and chin and a valley of toothless mouth. His clothes 
were a patchwork of different materials. The study which 
I made of him delighted him so much that he begged for 
it. He would pay me, he said. 

“The price does not matter,” he exclaimed, “if only La 
Dona will put in a goat also.” For he owned the flock 
which he led every day into the mountains. 

I made him a copy of it, and all the other goatherds 
trooped up to the castle to see Tio Pepe’s portrait. 

“Ay, there’s Pepe,” they cried, slapping their thighs; 
“there he is with his patches, and his crook’d stick, and 
his sandals and his old nose and all. Tod’, Tod’.” 

It was near the time of our departure from Jijona. Tio 
Pepe in vain tried to press on me a few pesetas for the 
portrait. He searched his old mind for a means of showing 
his gratitude; and just as we were leaving he found a solu¬ 
tion. At five o’clock in the morning, as our trunk was 
leaving the house on the shoulders of Tia Roger’s strong 
young son, up ran Uncle Pepe with a large can of goat’s 
milk, all of which we had to drink on the spot; or he would 
never have forgiven us. 


222 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


The night before our departure we had packed, for we 
had to start early to catch the motor-bus. Then we had 
gone to bed. We had just snuggled down beneath the 
blankets, for the nights were getting quite fresh, when I 
heard the sounds of a guitar. The sounds drew closer. 
They were coming up the hill. A suspicion grew to a 
certainty. 

“Jan,” I cried, “those goatherds are giving us a fare¬ 
well serenade.” 

We hurried into our clothes. The goatherds had sat 
themselves down on the stone bench at the front door and 
were singing lustily at the moon. I don’t know what the 
Spanish etiquette in such matters is, but we went out and 
took part in our own serenade. It was a lengthy affair. 
The time crept on, and we, shivering somewhat, for the 
night grew quite cold, sat ungratefully thinking of the 
sleep we were missing, and wondering how we were to 
awaken ourselves at four o ’clock. At two o ’clock they went 
away, and we rushed back to bed to seize the two hours of 
sleep which remained for us. 


CHAPTER XXV 


MURCIA—AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORYERAS 

W E came back to Murcia, to our headquarters in the 
Paseo de Corveras, at the beginning of October. 
Though the town was so far south, the cold 
weather had well begun. In the daytime the sun seemed 
as fierce as ever, but the dust that had lain inches deep 
during the summer was now an equal depth of semi-liquid 
mud, and the house, without fireplaces or any means of 
creating artificial warmth, had in it a faint though insidious 
chill. Save in the hottest weather, stone or cement floors 
are comfortless to live with. Marciana, the woman whose 
services we had shared with Antonio during Rosa’s small¬ 
pox, returned to us. She was a woman of sixty years, 
bulky in figure, dressed in black of an eternal mourning, 
and was mother of the most talented sculptor of Murcia. 
She was an illustration of the interprovincial jealousy of 
the Spaniard. She came from Don Quixote’s country, 
La Mancha, and was never weary of chanting its praises. 

“Ah, Senora,” she exclaimed, “that is a wonderful land. 
Corn, oil and wine in abundance. Dancing and singing in 
the villages all night long. And what a wonderful people 
are those of mi pueblo. 1 My two sisters, they each weigh 
at least twice as much as do I. And then we are a civilized 
folk there, I can assure you. You saw how they treated it 
here when Rosa had the smallpox. No precautions, even 
though one died of it a few doors down the street. Now 
in mi pueblo they stretch sheets in front of the doors of 
warning; the necessaries of life are put on to the doorstep, 
and the money to pay for them is dropped by the hands 

i My village. 

223 


224 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


of those who are in the house, and who are not allowed 
beyond the sheet, into pans of vinegar, so that they may 
be purified of the disease. Now that is real cleanliness. 

“But, thanks to God, Senora, Rosa is much better. The 
spots are disappearing, she will not be marked, and she 
has given birth to a son. It was a most divine birth. Of 
course it was fear for the son that made everybody so 
anxious. * 1 

Marciana was a dilatory servant. Nothing was ever 
ready up to date, and she invariably drowned all my com¬ 
missions for the market with a flood of words. She would 
wait all the morning in the queue which gathered at the 
Government Olive Oil depot, to buy olive oil for me at a 
few centimos cheaper than she could buy it from the gro¬ 
cers ; and no explanation that she wasted more of our pay 
than she gained in cheapness convinced her. 

Antonio greeted us with delight, as did Emilio, the guitar- 
maker, whom we went to visit on the first day of our return. 
Each, however, was in a different mood. Antonio, in spite 
of the joy caused by his new son, who he said had been 
born “most preciously,” was in a rage. He was in trouble 
with the local authorities about his taxes. It appears that 
there is a factory tax which does not depend upon the size 
of the business, but the mere fact that there is a business. 
Thus Antonio, with his three or four girl helpers, was con¬ 
demned to pay the same sum as a factory employing a 
thousand hands. 

“It is impossible!” shouted Antonio. “We are thus 
crushed out of existence. I may be able to arrange it, but, 
if I cannot, then it is no use my going on. All the profits 
are swallowed up in one gulp. I shall shut down, and sell 
up everything.” 

Emilio, on the other hand, was flushed with unsullied 
delight. A pompous man was sitting in his shop with a 
guitar across his knees. Now and then he drew from it a 
flourish of arpeggios, very technical, but rather meaning¬ 
less. Emilio stood over him, his eyes sparkling at the 


AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 225 


guitar, which appeared to be exquisite in tone and strong 
in volume. 

“Aha! my friends, congratulate me,” cried he. “I have 
surpassed myself. Permit me, Senor.’’ He took the gui¬ 
tar from the pompous man, and handed it reverently to 
Jan. “Try it, only touch it and see what a quality it has. 
See how the bass note rings out, and how well-balanced to 
it is the treble. I had no more than set the strings out on 
to it when Don Feliz, the little maestro whom you know, 
came in. He played upon it, and so full was my heart with 
the perfect tone of it, and with the thought that I, Emilio 
Peralta, had made it, that the tears came running down 
my face. I wept, Senor, to hear it. All night long I could 
not sleep for fear that the tone might alter, as sometimes 
it does. Sometimes, indeed, a guitar newly made sounds 
of no value, but in a few days or weeks even it may become 
first rate. But this was good from the beginning, and it 
has remained so.” 

The pompous man took a stately leave of us. Emilio 
was so excited by his new achievement that he went on 
talking: 

“One does not come to make guitars like this easily. 
How many are there alive in Spain to-day who could do it f 
Only one, and I am he. Arias is dead, Raminez also, though 
I have not seen a Raminez to equal this one. For I will 
warrant that there are few better guitars than this in 
Spain. Unluckily, it was sold before it was completed, or 
I would scarcely have let it go. It was ordered by a colonel 
in the Army. Play on it, Senor, but do not play Flamenco, 
for you must not tap upon the soundboard, or you will 
injure the varnish. This is built for Classical.” 

Jan played, and it gave out a sonorous and clear melody. 

“From whom did I learn, Senor? I learned from no¬ 
body. My father was a guitar-maker, but a poor one. He 
taught me nothing. Indeed, I was married before the de¬ 
sire came to me to make fine instruments. Then how I 
forked, Senor! I had an idea of the perfect guitar in my 


226 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


head; but between idea and accomplishment what a gap! 
I could not cross it. Of two guitars, made equally alike, 
one would be good, the other useless. When this happened 
I would take them to pieces to search for the reason. For 
years I have lived in poverty, spoiling good wood which 
cost me all my earnings. I have not studied the guitars of 
others. Always in my head I carried the idea of the per¬ 
fect instrument. Slowly I have struggled towards it. Now 
I know. But at what a cost have I acquired knowledge! ’ ’ 

Jan touched a chord on the instrument in his hands, and 
as it throbbed out its deep responsive note he remembered 
the saying of Chopin: “Nothing is more beautiful than a 
good guitar; save perhaps two.” 

Emilio promised to send Professor Feliz to us as soon 
as he came in; and we walked back to the house through the 
Murcian mud, which, soaking through our shoes, made us 
modify our previous eulogy of the alpagata. On barrows 
in the street they were selling the first culled clusters of 
dates of the season; we bought both pale and dark varie¬ 
ties, but they were hard and tasteless. With the dates on 
the barrows were the orange fruit of the persimon. 

While we had been away at Jijona a cat had taken 
possession of our house for the purpose of kittening. How 
she had got in was a mystery, for the windows and doors 
all had been tightly sealed up, but we had discovered her 
with her family at the bottom of the packing-cases which 
had formed our bed at Verdolay. We had heard strange 
faint sounds as though of mice on the evening of our re¬ 
turn. The noises, however, did not cease for all our pres¬ 
ence. We had gone to explore; suddenly, a noise like a 
boxful of exploding matches had burst up from under our 
noses, and something black dashed across the dimly lit 
room and out through the window. There were two kittens 
at the bottom of the narrowest of the packing-cases. We 
had moved them to a large box near to the window. That 
night there had been a fearful noise of yowling and squeak¬ 
ing. In the morning we found the kittens back in the box 


AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 227 


from which we had moved them. The cat was quite un¬ 
approachable. She burst out into a fury of spitting when¬ 
ever we came near. Then with one final explosion hurried 
from the room. These wild cats were the pest of Murcia. 
One could leave no window open but they poured into the 
house. All food had to be securely shut up; the marks 
of their dusty paws were everywhere. 

When we returned from Emilio’s we found that our pres¬ 
ence in the house had been too much for the cat’s nerves. 
She had disappeared from her box and the kittens were 
gone with her. 

Don Feliz, the half-blind guitar teacher, came in the eve¬ 
ning. He again said he was an honest man, and that his 
terms were five pesetas a month. He was delighted to hear 
that we both were to be his pupils. Part of his delight 
came from the money he would earn; but some of his de¬ 
light was due to the fact that he had ousted Bias as Jan’s 
teacher. I do not think we have met anybody more inap¬ 
propriately named than Don Feliz. If Mr. Shandy’s 
theories have any foundation he was cursed from his 
christening. He was not a Murciano, but a Castilian, and, 
in consequence, depreciated the people he lived amongst 
and was in turn not appreciated by them. He lived con¬ 
stantly torn by jealousy of the other guitar-players in the 
town. 

“Tell me,” he exclaimed, “what do you think of the 
playing of Don Ambrosio ? ’ ’ 

Don Ambrosio was the pompous man we had met in 
Emilio’s shop. 

“Technically, excellent, but rather frigid,” we said. 

“Yes,” exclaimed Don Feliz, “that is it. Frigid, yes, 
frigid! Nor is Don Timoteo a good player, and as for that 
Blasito, that gipsy—pah! You see, he has never learned 
music. So that, if he does get a good melody from some¬ 
body else, he cannot harmonize it. And his Flamenco is 
of the taverns. It is low, common music. Now I play 
Classical. Have you heard my piece which represents a 


228 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


battle? How I imitate the mitrailleuse on the bass string? 
Now that is quite different from anything which that fellow 
Bias can play. Of course I regret that you wish to learn 
Flamenco. But that which I will teach you will be a clas¬ 
sicized Flamenco. I have made it into music. You see, I 
have been in a conservatoire in my youth. That puts me 
on a different level from all these other players.. So I 
have made of my Flamenco something more refined. It is 
no longer your tavern monstrosity that Bias plays.’’ 

Personally we preferred Bias as a player, and the music 
of Bias as music. But Don Feliz was somewhat better as 
a teacher. His conservatoire had taught him at least the 
names of the notes. But he was very irritable. Poor fel¬ 
low, at twopence a lesson, he had to give a round of thirty 
lessons per day to make a bare subsistence. Sometimes he 
said that his pupils were so dense that he could teach them 
but three or four consecutive notes per day. Once we 
heard him debating with a possible client whether it was 
worth while or no to walk two miles in order to get three 
lessons in the same house. Our consciences—concerning 
sweating—pricked us and we paid him double fees. In 
consequence of his gratitude he came to our house last of 
all and gave us lessons of four times the duration of any 
one else. 

After he had gone, we were still playing, when Marciana 
came in with some parcels. 

“Aha!” she cried. “That is a jota. It is the music of 
mi pueblo. La jota, La jota.” 

She put down the parcels; spread out her arms and with 
a balance and elegance extraordinary in one so bulky began 
to dance. After twenty bars, however, she stopped. 

“Ei,” she sighed, “how sad it is that one grows old. 
How sad that youth passes all too quickly! ’ ’ 

That night a terrific thunderstorm broke over the valley. 
The thunder crashed, the lightning flared and the rain came 
down as though pouring from a gigantic hose. In the 
middle of all the noise we heard a strange sound. 


AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 229 


“Wah! wah! wah! Squeak! Squeak!” 

The cat had come back; but with only one kitten. The 
next morning we stayed in the house. From the windows 
we could mark the change which autumn had brought over 
the Paseo de Corveras. The dust was no longer blown 
along the road, which was now a still river of liquid mud. 
The towrn dust-cart, a donkey with panniers, no longer 
promenaded the street; no longer did we hear the cheerful 
blasphemy of the dust-boy who, stooping to gather up some 
refuse, found that his dust-cart had impatiently trotted on. 
In its* place were the exhortations of the pig-drivers, who 
urged hordes of monstrous black pigs through the mud. 
Some of the porkers were, however, so heavy on their feet 
that they had to be brought in carts. The squealing of 
them filled the morning air. The fruit merchants, also 
with panniered donkeys, no longer called out ‘ ‘ Melacotones, 
peras!” but “Uvas! Uvas!” 1 and a man wandered about 
with a huge basket of snails. The maize fields in front of 
the house were cut and stacked, and in the fields queens of 
Sheba were dragging the primitive ploughs, while men be¬ 
hind them beat to powder the lumps of baked earth which 
were turned up. Instead of the almost dead silence which 
greeted the strengthening sun, people moved about all day; 
parasols had given place to flirting fans. The country 
girls wore bunches of flowers in their hair, some even put 
one tall blossom sticking upright from the coiffure, where 
it nodded and bowed with the movements of the wearer. 
In the fruit garden the lemons had quite fallen, but the 
oranges were beginning to become a livid yellow on one 
side of the bush, while the dates had passed from a pale 
to a deep golden hue. 

I went about with Luis exploring balconies for views, 
and finally decided upon a view of Murcia from the tall 
campanile of the Cathedral. When I got back I found that 
the cat once more had decamped, taking the kitten with 
her. The second kitten had been lost. In the afternoon 

i“Peaches, Pears!” but “Grapes! Grapes!” 



230 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Luis came in. He brought an invitation from some friends 
for me to play the piano at their house on Saturday eve¬ 
ning. That evening Don Feliz exclaimed: 

“I have an old guitar. It is a unique instrument, none 
other like it has ever been seen in Spain. I bought it, at 
a bargain, for thirty pesetas; but I would sell it to a friend 
for the same money. Now you, Senor, have no guitar of 
your own. This is a veritable instrument for a museum. 
Come and see it on Sunday morning. I will show you the 
way.” 

We dined at Elias’, as was our custom, and trudged back 
through the mud. On the darkened stairs of our house we 
heard a wailing and almost tumbled over the spitting cat, 
which had brought back the kitten once more. We gathered 
up the kitten and, followed at some distance by the sus¬ 
picious cat, put it back into the packing-case. 

All this while we were rather short of electric lights in 
our house. Antonio had borrowed most of the light-bulbs 
to decorate a shrine which he had erected in one of the 
churches. The candle which the righteous once offered up 
to God is going out of fashion. Nowadays, instead of 
burning so many feet of bees-wax, one turns on so many 
volts. Lamb has drawn a picture of two priests disputing 
as to which should offer up a blessing, with a final com¬ 
promise that neither should do so; and the disappointment 
of the defrauded God. To-day he could go further, he 
could depict the deity being forced to go to the factory 
chimney for the scent of his burnt sacrifice. A Spanish 
writer, Pio Baroja, in a novel proposes a society called the 
“Extra-Rapid to Heaven Assurance Society.” The insurer 
pays in a sum, and on his death hundreds of gramophones 
are turned on chanting prayers for his speedy deliverance 
from purgatory. “God,” says the author, “is so far away, 
that he will not notice the substitution.” This is, of 
course, a satire on the modern habit of replacing candles 
by electric lights, but the satire is no more absurd than the 
actuality. 


AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 231 


Alongside of the bridge was a tall shrine built into the 
side of the house and lit up thus at night with electric light. 
The image was covered with a large sheet of plate glass, 
and I said that it was a sculptured figure. Jan, on the 
other hand, insisted that it was a painting. We had an 
argument about it and on the next day returned to verify 
together. It was, in fact, a painting. But at night, re¬ 
turning from Elias’, we looked up at the shrine by chance, 
and stopped, astonished. If it was a painting it was most 
realistic. We looked more closely. The more we examined 
it, the more did it seem sculptured. Then the explanation 
dawned on us. It was sculptured, hut during the daytime 
a painted curtain was drawn down in front of it. 

At luncheon next day we were disturbed by a hullabaloo 
from the attic. The wretched cat had taken her kitten up 
there, to look for peace from those meddlesome humans. 
That night we were awakened again by terrible noises from 
under our bed. The cat was still wandering like a lost soul 
looking for peace. Daily the kitten appeared and disap¬ 
peared with exasperating irregularity. At last, however, 
we managed to tame the cat so that we were able to stroke 
her. Then the animal burst out into the strangest of 
noises, like a small badly oiled circular saw. It was purr¬ 
ing. From that moment it took possession of the house. 
All its shyness vanished. It tucked up its sleeves and 
turned out of the house any other feline intruder. 

One afternoon we were awakened from our siesta by a 
furious cat fight underneath the bed. The black cat and a 
ginger-coloured female were locked in combat, and making 
a noise like a hundred siphons. The battle continued 
across the sitting-room, the ginger cat giving ground. 
Finally she retreated to the balcony, where there was for a 
while armed neutrality, both singing war songs quite Span¬ 
ish in their intervals. Then the black cat sprang. Ginger 
backed to avoid the rush, but backed too far. She toppled 
over into the street, fell with a thud on to the mud pave¬ 
ment, gathered herself together and with a scream of dis- 


232 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


appointed fury dashed through the nearest open door. To 
our amazement all the occupants of the house, a young man, 
an old woman, a girl of seventeen and one of six hurried 
into the street, their eyes wide open with terror. 

“What is the matterf” we shouted to them. 

“A cat with rabies has just rushed into our house,” they 
cried in answer. 

The fear of rabies is very prevalent, and with reason. 
One does not pat stray dogs in Spain, nor does one make 
advances to unknown cats. Any animal which can bite is 
under suspicion. It is lucky, indeed, that fleas can’t get 
rabies. 

One Saturday I began sketching in the Cathedral cam¬ 
panile. The ascent of the tower was not by means of steps 
but by sloping lanes which travelled all round the inner 
walls. I had chosen my view from the belfry. On each 
side of me were small bells, and as each in turn clanged out 
the half or quarter hour according to size I stopped my 
ears. Suddenly there was a deafening crash. Before X 
realized what had happened I had fallen from my seat, the 
easel had gone spinning . . . almost fainting from the 
shock, I looked about me. Over my head an enormous 
clapper was swinging. Unconsciously, I had seated myself 
almost inside one of the biggest bells in the south of Spain, 
and it had rung. The clapper again swung itself with force 
against the side of the bell, and in spite of my protecting 
hands the sound burst through my head. For ten minutes 
afterwards my hand was shaking too violently to allow me 
to paint. 

The view from the tower was exquisite. Immediately 
below me were the blue glazed cupolas and the arabesques 
of the cathedral fagade on which little stone saints gazed 
out over the town. Then came a large square centred on 
a circular garden of flowers—edged on one side by the pink 
front of the Archbishop’s palace, many windowed. From 
the end of the square narrow sunless streets led into the 
town, which gradually became a patchwork of flat roofs 


AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 233 

on which smaller buildings were erected. The huge square 
block of red brick of the Reina Victoria Hotel stood out 
over the sinuous river, on the banks of which stood the red 
pepper mills and beyond which showed the huertas stretch¬ 
ing out to the mountains. Red, ochre, yellow and green 
were the chief colour notes, while blue and purple shadows 
gave relief and solidity to the whole. 

In the evening I played the piano at the house of Luis’ 
friends. Here was a typical Spanish bourgeois interior. 



Every resting-place was crowded with cheap bric-a-brac. 
The chairs were draped with velvet and silk hangings and 
antimacassars; the walls hung with enormous photographic 
enlargements, from the decorating of which Flores made 
some of his living. Card-racks covering the interspaces of 
the walls were filled with coloured picture postcards. 

“We have brought you here,” said Flores, “because it 
is just opposite to the Circulo des Varios Artes. 1 The 


i The Arts Club of Murcia. 










234 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


pianist of the Arts Club is very conceited. We want to 
take him down, by showing him that a Senora can play 
better than he does.” 

I was rather annoyed; but could not draw back. So I 
put my best into the music. Grieg (pronounced by them 
Hriech) seems to suit the Spanish temperament: so I 
played The Wedding March, Papillion and the Carnival. 
There was a pause. Then faintly as a retort, from the 
Circulo des Varios Artes, came the easiest of Grieg’s 
“lyrical pieces” played carefully by the maestro. As if 
he would say, “I too can play Grieg.” 

On Sunday morning we set off with Don Feliz to see 
the old guitar. 

“It is in the house of my novia, 1 whom I shall be de¬ 
lighted to introduce to you.” 

We were amazed. Until that moment we had imagined 
Don Feliz to be quite an old man, but looking closely at 
him one could see that he might be within the limit of 
thirty to forty years. On this second visit to Murcia the 
people were not so strongly affected by my appearance in 
the streets. For my part I no longer wore a hat, but car¬ 
ried a parasol; I had exchanged my ordinary dress for an 
ex-munition overall, which people said was muy elegante. 
But we penetrated into a new part of the town, then was 
some staring and some pointing. I mentioned this casually 
to Don Feliz. 

“Do not fear,” he exclaimed, “you are safe with me. I 
have a terrible reputation in these parts. I am known as a 
bad man. If I get into a rage, my anger is terrible to 
see . . . terrible. The children slink away in the street 
at my coming.” 

This was not the estimate we had formed of him, from 
his encounter with Bias in Emilio’s shop. Poor Don Feliz! 
Like so many others he had formed a dream self which 
contained most of the qualities in which he was lacking. I 
fear that only his illusive self was terrible, and that none 


i Betrothed. 



AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 235 


but dream children ever shrank at his passing. The house 
of his novia bore on its weather-beaten front the arms of 
some bygone hidalgo; now it was an apartment house. We 
clambered up staircases of black wood, into one of the few 
dark-coloured interiors we have seen in Spain. The guitar 
was of a strange form and with a scrolled head, the curve 
of its shape having some of the beauty to be found in 
negro sculpture. Jan seized the bargain, and carried it 
home. 

No sooner had he the guitar in the house than he tuned 
it, and crashing his finger-nails across it, struck out a 
rasped chord. He quickly followed it with a shout of dis¬ 
may. From out of one of the big holes had crept a startled 
bug. 

After my experience with the church bell I could sympa¬ 
thize with the insect, weeping perhaps “walrus tears’ ’ 
upon its death-bed. But the problem of how one could dis¬ 
infect a guitar was worrying. The case had no cracks for 
vermin-harbouring, so we shut up the instrument; and after 
some indecision Jan decided to trust to luck and leave it 
alone. 

On Sunday night we gave a party to Emilio, his wife, the 
little Professor and other afficianados of the guitar. We 
played to them selections .of genuine classical music, Bach, 
Beethoven, Handel on the gramophone. Don Feliz sat by 
himself in a corner, his head in the air, tapping his foot to 
the metre. 

“All that, all that I have heard before,” he said. 

Emilio listened with delight on his rugged face. Every 
few minutes he whispered to his wife: 

“Shut up talking. This is worth listening to.” 

Then we tried an experiment. We had just received 
from El Senor a plate of Stravinsky’s “Oiseau du Feu.” 
We put it on to the machine. The audience kept an intense 
silence. 

“But that is marvellous!” they exclaimed as soon as the 
record was over. “Play it once more, Senor.” 


236 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


“Senor,” said one of Emilio’s friends, “what can I do 
for you? Have you any milk—no?” 

He ran downstairs and out of the house. In ten minutes 
he came back, thrust a milk-can into Jan’s hands. 

“There!” he exclaimed. “And if you want any more 
cow’s milk, come to me. I keep a milfc-shop, you know.” 
Then he went on more seriously: “But you are indeed 
lucky to have bought that old guitar of Don Feliz. He 
would never sell it to me. I have offered a hundred pesetas 
for it; and there are others who have offered more.” 

This left us with a problem in psychology to work out 
for the next few days. Why had Don Feliz sold Jan the 
guitar? 

We put the question to Luis. 

“Oh,” he answered, “probably Don Feliz found the 
Senor Juan sympathetic.” 

But this did not satisfy us. Don Feliz had made much 
of the fact that we were leaving the country: that we were 
going far away. At last we worked it out thus. 

Don Feliz had bought his novia a laud. He was short 
of money to pay for it. This, however, would not have 
been enough reason in itself, but he was also jealous of the 
other players in the town, and by selling the guitar defi¬ 
nitely to Jan he would first allay the temptation that he 
might sell it locally. He put the price low, because he 
knew we were badly off; but some of the wrench of parting 
with the instrument—of which he was very proud—was 
eased by knowing that it was going to be taken to the grand 
cities of London and Paris, where its uniqueness would be 
valued. But we think he would have died of starvation 
rather than allow one of his local rivals to possess his old 
guitar. 

When I was not sketching in the campanile, Jan and I 
went to the cafes and drew the people sitting about us. This 
gave delight to the waiters. One morning while we were at 
one of the cafes facing the river Bias came up. He passed 


AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 237 

over the fact that we had quarrelled, and that Jan had 
dropped him for Don Feliz. 

“Draw me!” said Bias. 

The result was that one by one all the richest gipsies of 
the town came and posed to me at the cafe tables. This 
was, in fact, the gipsies’ cafe. They were on the whole a 
handsome set of men, very intelligent and shrewd in ex¬ 
pression and of prosperous appearance. Most of these 



carried the indefinable touch which makes an international¬ 
ism amongst those who are interested in beasts of burden. 
They are reputed to be expert cattle and horse thieves, and 
are still to some extent despised by the Spaniard. But our 
first impressions were not unfavourable. 

The autumn seemed to be a period of fiesta* We had 
luckily just missed the great fiesta of Murcia which cul¬ 
minates with a huge procession out to Fuen Santa in the 







238 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


mountains. But often we were awakened at three in the 
morning by a series of alarming reports and explosions in 
the street outside. There was a large church at the end 
of the Paseo de Corveras, and it seemed as though guns 
were going off all around the walls. The first time we 
heard this we sprang to our windows, for we had heard 
something of the quarrelsome nature of the Murcians. But 
the explosions were up in the air. Rocket after rocket 
soared up into the air and exploded with a loud crash, then 
large zigzag crackers were thrown down into the street. 
Grumbling at the noise, we went back to bed. Next day 
we found out that it was a fiesta, the rockets sent up by 
the priests; and often after that we were awakened in the 
dead of night by these almost Chinese religious ceremo¬ 
nies. 

We had heard much of the quarrelsome nature of the 
huertanos. Luis and Flores had both told us tales of quar¬ 
rels amongst the cultivators. Both at Verdolay and in 
Murcia we had seen small bands of young men wandering 
about at eventide with guitars and songs. They were hunt¬ 
ing for trouble, and if they should meet another hand, then 
a fight ensued, ending with broken instruments and pos¬ 
sibly a stab or two. 

One afternoon Jan was walking homewards from 
Emilio’s, where he had been buying guitar-strings. He 
was close to the Paseo de Corveras, when a young man 
rushed round a comer and cannoned hard into him. Jan 
stumbled and to save himself clutched the man by the coat. 
It was a corner around which youths were accustomed to 
lark, and Jan, believing this to be a piece of horse-play, 
decided, while yet stumbling and clutching, that the horse¬ 
play was too rough. So dragging at the blouse of the man, 
who struggled to escape, Jan exhorted him to come back 
and to explain himself. While he was still holding on to 
the man, a crowd burst around the corner and flung itself 
on to the presumed joker. Jan’s head was in a whirl. One 
man leapt fiercely on to the joker’s back, wrenched his 


AUTUMN IN THE PASEO DE CORVERAS 239 


arms behind him and grasped him. The struggling crowd 
swayed to and fro and suddenly lurched sideways through 
the door of a tobacconist’s shop. Two women in the shop 
began to shriek at the upper pitch of their voices. 

The turmoil quietened. A furious talk began in the shop. 
The young man who had pinioned the joker, trying to ex¬ 
plain, loosened his grip to use his hands conversationally. 
At once the joker leapt for freedom. He ran, panting like 
a dog, out of the shop, the crowd bellowing, amid scream¬ 
ing, at his heels. The man was chased into an ironmon¬ 
ger’s, where he took refuge behind the counter. The crowd 
blocked up the doorway. Jan, who had joined the crowd 
in dismayed curiosity, then began to pick up detached 
words: “Asesino, Asesino . . . asesinato.” 

“Good Lord!” said Jan to himself. “I don’t want to 
get mixed up in a murder trial.” 

As he turned away, two gendarmes, with the ridiculous 
schoolgirl hats on their heads, led the murderer away. 

During this time I had been at home. A sudden out¬ 
burst of noise dragged me to the window. Down the street, 
a man was running. He went in a queer way, holding 
himself between the legs with his hands, and sometimes 
stumbling, sometimes leaping as one does in dreams of 
pursuit. Carts were driven furiously after him. He was 
shouting out in a voice, full of surprise and of anger. After 
a moment I made out the words: 

“Catch the man who has murdered me! Catch the vil¬ 
lain who has killed me!” 

He stumbled once more and fell. Men jumped from the 
carts, lifted him into one, and drove him away. 

I ran downstairs. Antonio’s gaunt mother-in-law was 
standing in the doorway. 

“It is an assassination,” she said. “I doubt that the 
poor man will live. He was stabbed in a ticklish part.” 

“I wonder where Jan is,” I said to myself; and at that 
moment saw him coming along the sidewalk. I ran to him. 
“ Jan,” I cried, “a man has been murdered.” 


240 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


“I know,” he answered; “I unwittingly caught the 
murderer. ’ * 

The Paseo de Corveras must have more than its fair 
percentage of fat old women. They all stood on their door¬ 
steps talking in awed tones of the tragedy. Then with a 
ludicrous unanimity each pushed her skirts between her 
legs with a dramatic hand and holding herself so that she 
plainly illustrated her meaning exclaimed, 

“Ei! el pobre! Ye en un sitio tan delicado.” 


CHAPTER XXVI 


LORCA 

W E still had money for another three weeks, although 
we had been four months in Spain. The weather 
in Murcia was very cold; damp, chilling winds 
blew down the valley. We decided to go westwards, to ex¬ 
plore Lorca, which we had heard was both fine pictorially 
and also which was called ‘ 1 the City of the Sun.’ 9 On sug¬ 
gesting the idea to some of our Murcian friends, they ad¬ 
vised us not to go. “It is a town of bad people,’’ they 
said; * 1 they are all gipsies. ” We had heard before of these 
towns of bad people. One lay on the far side of the Mur¬ 
cian valley; a village which clustered round the foot of the 
peak of rock on the top of which Was a ruined castle. These 
people had the reputation of chasing out intruding stran¬ 
gers with sticks and stones. Antonio, fishing in the vicinity 
of this village, had once been maltreated. The villagers 
were proud of this brutality. 

“Yes,” they would say, “we are brutes. We are uncul¬ 
tivated. We are the biggest brutes for fifty miles around, 
and we mean to remain so.” 

Other people had said that Lorca was charming. So we 
decided to find out for ourselves. We hoped to find rooms 
in a posada, and we reduced our luggage to moderate di¬ 
mensions; most of it we put in the van, leaving ourselves 
only the guitar and the laud to look after. 

The train left early in the morning, and stopped at the 
first station, where we had to change. We rushed across 
the line, having to clamber under a long train of waggons 
which blocked the way, and won corner seats. A lanky boy 
of eighteen, dressed in a long white travelling ulster, with 

241 


242 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


a beret on his head, took most of the other seats in the 
carriage, filling them with packages. The young man 
seemed very familiar with railway travelling: he called 
all the porters by name, and exchanged smokes with the 
engine-driver. 

But the train did not move. Presently the youth came 
back and said: 

“The engine is a bad one. It won't start. They are 
sending to Murcia for another." 

He went away once more. A luggage train rumbled into 
the station. This brought our boy back with a rush. 

“Here," he cried, “spread out, spread out as much as 
you can. It's an agricultural train, and we shall be 
swamped with labourers." 

He pushed his boxes and packages more widely over the 
seats. His prediction was justified. A horde of unshaven 
men, carrying sacks and implements clambered up the side 
of the train and peered with round eyes into the windows. 

“No room here, no room here," cried the youth. 

“But there is nobody in the carriage," protested one of 
the agriculturists. 

“They are in the fonda," said the youth. 

In spite of the energies of officials accommodation could 
not be found. Soon the agriculturists were wailing their 
protests, wandering forlornly up and down. At last the 
heart of our youth was softened. 

“Here," he cried. “Room for two. Got to let some 
in," he added to us in an undertone, “or they’ll push the 
lot in on us." 

The two who accepted the invitation were very sub¬ 
servient, almost cringing, and we stowed their sacks and 
other luggage between our legs. They talked together in 
hoarse whispers. In time most of the peasants were 
placed, but one man who carried an enormous sack of 
potatoes seemed to be unplaceable, for he refused to be 
parted from his sack. The officials said the sack was too 
big for carriage traffic: it ought to go in the van. But no 


LORCA 


243 


protestation moved the owner. He was determined that, 
come what might, he and his sack would never part. 
Eventually, as usually happens in Spain, he was allowed 
to do as he liked. He and his sack were crushed into 
another carriage. 

Then ensued another dreary wait, and at last, three hours 
late, the train drew out of Alcantarilla. 

As soon as we were well under way, the youth said: 

“I’m off to a second-class carriage.” 

He opened the carriage door, got down on to the run¬ 
ning hoard and clambered off. After half an hour he 
returned. 

“They collect tickets round about here,” he said. 

Sure enough within ten minutes came the ticket collector. 

The train stopped at a station. The youth got out on to 
the platform with a carriage whip and a square parcel, 
which he handed to a waiting man, for which service he 
received money. This he did at other stations, and gradu¬ 
ally we realized what was his occupation. In one part of 
Murcia we had noted shops which called themselves 
Agencies. They had large notices saying, “Commissions 
for Lorca, for Barcelona, for Zaragoza, etc., etc.” 

We had not understood their purport, but by some jump 
of intuition connected the youth with these shops. He was 
the only Spanish substitute for the parcels post. 

At Totana two gipsy women came into the carriage, very 
friendly and talkative. At the next station the two work¬ 
men left us. In the carriage they had appeared good- 
humoured, inadequate morsels of humanity. But they 
descended into the bosoms of their family. Wives and 
daughters crowded round them and seized and shouldered 
their bags, packs, sacks and implements. The men seemed 
to swell out like a dry thing cast into water, blooming like a 
dead sea lily as they stood receiving the caresses of their 
womenfolk. The last we saw of the more insignificant of 
the two was a picture of him striding like a king along the 
dusty road to the village with his family in humble though 


244 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


happy procession behind. Well does the Spanish proverb 
say, “It is better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of 
a lion.” 

Two gendarmes—greenish khaki in uniform, with the 
schoolgirlish helmets—armed with rifles took the place of 
the peasants. The younger gipsy woman addressed them. 
One of the gendarmes grunted, the other glared his eye 



round and said nothing. Again she made a remark, and 
again there was no reply. Then she said: 

“But it was you who arrested Jose.” 

“Well,” answered the gendarme with a heard, “what 
of it?” 

“But why did you arrest him?” said the gipsy. “He 
was innocent. He did not murder Ramon.” 

“So you say.” 





LORCA 


245 


“But it is true. He is a cousin of Conchita here. He 
was at her house that evening. There is no evidence.” 

“There was enough to get him arrested.” 

“But that was all made up. You see, Esteban hates him ; 
and Esteban got up that false evidence. You look up what 
Esteban was doing. I don’t say that he was the murderer, 
but he knows something about it.” 

“Yes, he knew that Jose did it.” 

“But I tell you Jose was with Conchita here.” 

“Well, tell that to the Judge. It is nothing to do with 
me. I was told to arrest Jose and I arrested him. Hum” 
—he looked at Conchita—“I suppose she is going to see 
him now?” 

“Yes, we are going to see Jose. Poor fellow, and him 
innocent. ’’ 

“Well, if his defence is all right, he’ll get off. If it 
isn’t, he won’t—that’s all.” 

We did not think that Jose’s neck was in any danger. 
We had gained an impression that the average sentence for 
casual murder in Spain is about two or three years’ im¬ 
prisonment. This conversation went on for some time. 
The gipsies talked round the subject, over it, under it, 
twisted it inside out and outside in. With all these varia¬ 
tions it lasted till we arrived at Lorca, when we all, gipsies, 
gendarmes, agency hoy and ourselves, got down from the 
train. 

We put our luggage into the luggage-room and set out 
to look for the town, which we had learned by experience 
would he found at some distance from the station. A boy 
who carried a rope over his shoulder accosted us, hut we 
declined his services. We strode out into a dusty road, and 
there stood undecided, for there were two paths to choose 
from. The boy with the rope, who now had a huge box 
on his shoulders, came up, and saying, “Follow me, 
Senores,” walked on. We looked at him and realized that 
here again we had touched the East. Here was a cord 
porter straight out of The Arabian Nights. The rope was 


246 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


round the box and he held it to his shoulders. With his 
rope he earned his living. We followed him, asking him 
for some place where we could eat. He named the dearest 
hotel at once. We declined, explaining that we wanted the 
cheapest possible, that is, as long as the cooking was fit 
to eat. 

* 1 1 understand , 9 9 he said. 1 ‘ Follow me. ’’ 

The long avenue of lime trees came to an end—and our 
first view of Lorca was opened out. The town was almost 
like a mathematical line, length without breadth. It skirted 
the foot of a hill for three miles, almost one long street, 
which we were looking at end on. Spires towered into the 
air, and on the top of the cliff the walls of a great Saracen 
ruin overlooked the town. The whole hill-side, between 
town and castle, was covered with the grotesque foliage of 
the prickly pear. The cord porter took us down to the 
river, which was crossed by a plank, then up into the town. 
He led us through small streets which fringed the great 
main street, put down his box at a corner, led us up another 
street and stopped at a high barricaded gate. Two filthy 
children were playing on the step. The cord porter rapped 
with his knuckles. There was no answer. He rapped 
again loudly. A hoarse voice cried out in questioning 
reply. 

“It’s Paco,” shouted the porter. “I’ve got two cus¬ 
tomers here.” 

A quarrel ensued through the keyhole. 

There was a sound of a rusty lock and the door swung 
open. A woman heated with cooking and with annoyance 
began to curse the cord porter. 

“Why couldn’t you bring them to the proper entrance f ” 
she cried. 

But she let us in, took us through a yard in which huge 
stew-pots and frying-pans were cooking over a wood fire, 
and ushered us upstairs, past rooms filled with workmen 
diners, into a long chamber lit by a window at one end, 


LORCA 


247 


with bullfight posters on the walls. She brought us a plate 
of stew and wine. We asked for bread. 

“Why didn’t you bring your own?” she said. 

“We did not know,” we answered. 

“Oh, all right. I’ll give you bread this time. But, next 
time, bring your own bread with you.” 

We thought, “Lorca is a rough place.” There was a 
sound of loud chaffing, and in walked our agency boy of the 
train. 

“Hullo,” he exclaimed to us. “Are you here?” 

“Yes,” we answered. “And, now we see you here, we 
are sure this is the best place.” 

He grinned, chucked the waitress under the chin, and 
ordered a complex meal. As soon as the staff perceived 
our acquaintance with the agency boy, their manners 
changed. They became charming, inquiring after our need 
with a lively solicitude. We asked the diners about a 
posada. A bluff man, with a walrus moustache, seated at 
the same table, said the posada at which he was staying 
was comfortable. 

“When you have finished your meal,” he said, “I will 
lead you there and introduce you to the proprietor, an ex¬ 
cellent fellow. But you come unluckily. To-day is mar¬ 
ket day. There are many farmers in from the country, and 
it is possible that you will find difficulties.” 

As we went out the waitress came running after us. 
“You have left your bread behind,” she cried. 

With our new friend we went off. But the posada was 
full for the night. 

“There is another one, we will look at that,” said our 
guide. “If the other is full also, you shall have my room, 
and I will find a bed somewhere until a room is free. To¬ 
morrow the place will be emptier.” 

On the way to the second posada, we fell in once more 
with the cord porter. 

“You are looking for rooms,” he cried. “Why didn’t 


248 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


you tell me before? I know of a splendid place. I will 
lead you there.’’ 

“Perhaps that will be better,” said the man. “I do not 
think the other posada would really suit you. They say it 
is the meeting-place of loose women. You understand?” 

The cord porter took us to a house outside of which were 
about ten hen-coops. In the midst of the coops an old 
woman was sitting on a low chair. She was an extraordi¬ 
nary shape; like a Chinese lucky image, Hotei. Her knees 
were perched on the rung of the chair, and so large was 



her stomach that it rose in front of her like a balloon, 
coming in its highest part well to the level of her chin. 
She looked dingy and unwashed, but we could not well draw 
back, for the cord porter had told her our needs. The obese 
woman stood up, balancing her fantastic stomach by a 
backward bend of the spine. 

She had two rooms, one with a single bed, one with a 
couple. The single bed was small, the ceiling looked as 
if it were not innocent of vermin. We chose the double- 
bedded room after the conventional bargaining. 


LORCA 249 

‘‘You will indeed be better there,” said our friend. 
‘‘Two beds are better than one.” 

The cord porter was commissioned to fetch our luggage 
and we went off with the other man. We had invited him 
to take coffee with us. He proceded us to a small buvette, 
and the waiter showed us into a room partitioned into pri¬ 
vate boxes by means of canvas screens. 

“Here one is at one’s ease,” said our acquaintance. 

We told him that we were painters. 

“I am a zapatero,” 1 he said. “I have been here some 
weeks looking for work. My proper town is Aguilas, 
though I was born here. But Aguilas is not large. There 
was another zapatero in the town. The people all took 
their work to him. They said, ‘He is a fool, but you are 
clever. Therefore he can make a living only where he is 
known, and where folks sympathize with him; while you 
can easily make good elsewhere.’ So I had to come away. 
But times are bad. They say that there are too many 
zapateros in Lorca already. 

“Times are so bad in Lorca,” he went on, “that I don’t 
expect you will do the business here that you hope. Now, 
if you are the painters you ought to be, I have a proposal 
to make. You come with me to some towns I know of 
down the coast. You will put up your easel in the main 
street, and will paint, and I will sell lottery tickets at three 
goes for the real. We will do a splendid business. I can 
assure you that. ’ ’ 

Had the offer come at another moment we would have 
jumped at the chance of the fun. But we had a London 
Exhibition hanging over our heads. We dared not waste 
the time. This we explained to the zapatero, adding also 
our regrets and how well the idea would have gone in 
the book we were projecting. His expression altered at 
once. 

“Books?” said he. “You are book people?” 

“Yes.” 


i Bootmaker. 



250 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


“But,” he persisted, “you don’t mean to say that you 
are that kind of persons? Not with those books that Eng¬ 
lishmen come selling. You are book people”—his voice 
rose with indignation—“you have to do with those Bibles!” 

Shades of Borrow! we roared with laughter. Somewhat 
reassured the zapatero resumed his seat. We explained. 

“Ah,” he said, “I did not think that you could be that 
sort of persons and yet . . . You are English. I,” he 
added proudly, “am an Atheist! Of course I let my little 
boy read that book, one has to learn to read somehow. 
But I say to him, ‘Don’t believe it. Use it if you like, but 
don’t be taken in by it.’ ” 

We went back to the house to find that our luggage had 
arrived. A button was coming loose from my boot, so the 
zapatero borrowed needle and cotton and sewed it on pro¬ 
fessionally. Then, as he said he liked the guitar, we took 
out our instruments and began to play. The female Hotei 
ran into the entrada waving her hands. 

“Oh, oh,” she cried, “you mustn’t play here! You 
mustn’t play here! The owner of this house died three 
days ago, so we cannot allow any music here. It would 
show the greatest disrespect.” 

We said au revoir to the zapatero, and went out to 
examine Lorca. The houses on one side of the long 
street had swelled up the hill towards the Saracen castle. 
Through this we went clambering upwards. In appear¬ 
ance it was the oldest town we had seen. The houses were 
of all shapes, but of a uniform colour, like yellow rust, and 
the earth was of the same tint. The houses piled them¬ 
selves up in fine shapes, but Lorca suffered from the same 
drawback as Murcia, a drawback we had feared: it was 
too big. Had we attempted to sketch in the streets we 
should have been swamped by people as I had been in the 
market-place. The streets were full of men sitting in 
groups making alpagatas. They called out after us as we 
passed. The songs were different from those of Murcia 


LORCA 251 

or Jijona. Here is one, a guajiras which a woman was 
singing: 


“Love is an insect 
Which enters the body, 

And no rest is left there 
When it takes possession. 

It gnaws like a wood-louse 
The tree where it burrows; 

And in time it devours 
Volition and strength, 

Leaving only desires 

For the one who is worshipped. ’ ’ 

We scrambled np to the castle and from thence found a 
view of the surrounding country. On the south there was 
a passage not unlike that of Murcia, a flat cultivated valley; 
but to the north it looked as though giants had been at 
mining operations. The hills looked not like the result 
of nature but of artifice, they appeared to be huge mine 
dumps and slag heaps. It was fantastic and unpaintable. 
The town itself was too much like the conventionally pic¬ 
turesque mud-coloured compositions of Southern Europe 
that every painter brings back from his travels, and we 
decided that Lorca was not a painting ground for us; and 
that we would go back to Murcia on the following day, 
looking for some suitable spot at which to paint on the 
homeward route to Barcelona. 

We came down by a different path, passing a cluster of 
seven white hermitages built on a square plateau. They 
were small box-like structures, and once, we believe, her¬ 
mits did live in them, but now they are deserted. We 
reached Mrs. Hotei’s house both tired and hungry. A 
crowd of women in black had just returned from the land¬ 
lord’s funeral. They consented to boil us some eggs for 
supper, which we ate under Mrs. Hotei’s piercing eyes. 
From the ceiling of the supper room hung clusters of 


252 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


quinces, and on the mantelpieces were some interesting 
specimens of antique Spanish pottery. 

We went to bed early, and to our dismay found that one 
of the beds had been taken away. There was no washing 
apparatus in the room, and the window looking on to the 
road was curtained by an old dirty sack. 

“Well,” said we, “we are in for it. Pray Heaven that 
there are no bugs.” 

As we were about to undress we heard scuffling and gig¬ 
gling which drew our attention to another drawback, one 
to which we would not submit. There was a second door 
to our room, half glazed, and the glass was covered by a 
hanging drapery. But this drapery, which was outside 
the glass, had been pulled aside, and a row of faces of 
curious childreji were staring in on us. We rang the bell. 
The daughter of Mrs. Hotei was half surprised at our 
objection to publicity and that we were so squeamish about 
undressing as a popular spectacle. But we persuaded her 
to pin up a pink shawl on our side of the door, and we then 
went to bed. 

To bed, but not to sleep. 

The bed was distressingly narrow. We could remain 
in it by clinging together, but if we loosened our grip, one 
or the other began to roll out. After some while Jan had 
ideas of getting out and of sleeping on the floor, but the 
floor was of stone and the only mat in the room was small 
and circular. Our determination to leave Lorca strength¬ 
ened as the night wore on. At last we found a partial 
solution, we lashed ourselves together with the blankets. 
When sheer weariness was making us doze oft, a man up¬ 
stairs began to take off his boots. The floors were thin, 
and he seemed to be a centipede. Boot after boot he hurled 
into a corner, but even his feet were not inexhaustible, and 
at last we slept fitfully. 

We awoke very early, grateful at least that no bugs had 
disturbed us. In spite of the many warnings we had had 
of the verminous condition of Spain, it has not been our 


LORCA 


253 


experience to encounter in the provinces of Murcia and 
Alicante even as much insect life as one might easily find 
in Chelsea. Fleas, of course, there are, but in a hot dusty 
country fleas are to be expected. 

Washing things were brought on demand, though I think 
they had expected us to wash at the public sink in the out¬ 
house. Then we breakfasted on bread, coffee and grapes, 
while Mrs. Hotei sat by resting her stomach on the edge 
of the table and chanting in a hollow voice a paean of her 
own virtues. It ran somewhat thus: 

‘‘I am la gorda, 

The fat one of Lorca. 

My stomach is ill 

Of an illness which makes it 

Swell up like a football. 

But my heart has no illness; 

It is sound, it is loving, 

And makes no distinctions 
Between different peoples. 

“I am la gorda, 

The fat one of Lorca. 

My home is well known 
Because of its cheapness 
And the love of a mother, 

Which I shed o’er my lodgers. 

Nowhere else will you 
Find meals of such richness 
Or cooking so luscious 
For people whose purses 
Are small in dimensions. 

“I am la gorda, 

The fat one of Lorca. 

My house is so loved by 
The folk of the district 
That my bedrooms never 
One moment are empty. 


254 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


I’ll give you an instance: 

Last night, for example, 

Each bed carried double 
And would have contained more 
Could one but compress folks 
To smaller dimensions. 

“I am la gorda, 

The fat one of Lorca. 

Those who once come here 
Come back again, always. 

My card I will give you 
That you may remember 
That Lorca possesses 
A kind-hearted mother, 

Or, anyhow, one who 
Will fill that position 
As long as you settle 
The bill she presents you.” 

In this plain song she explained both the disappearance 
of our second bed and the centipedal man upstairs. When 
she had finished we broke to her the news of our imminent 
departure. We lunched once again at the eating-house, 
which this day was full of peasants. Three women in black 
who might have stepped out of the pages of the Bible 
faced us. They were not friendly in manner. A small 
soldier, half tipsy, came in and, soon after him, the agency 
youth. The latter began to tease the tipsy soldier, and in 
a short while both had pulled out knives and were threaten¬ 
ing each other in mock earnestness. But one could see that 
it needed little—an accidental word, a sentence misunder¬ 
stood—to swing the drunken soldier over from joking to 
earnest. We took coffee at a cafe in the central street. 
La gorda rolled up the street, came to our table, and 
accepted a glass of anis dulce for the illness of her stomach. 

We set off to the station followed by a small boy wheel¬ 
ing our luggage on a barrow. As I went people shouted 


LORCA 


255 


after me: “Sombrero, Sombrero.’’ The train was, of 
necessity, late. We sat down in the station hall, and the 
gipsy woman who had come from Totana joined us. A 
blind woman led by a child took up her position at the 
booking-office exit, cunningly begging from the folk as 
they were handling their small change. The small child 
had one bad eye and was wiping both eyes with the same 
handkerchief. One could see that she, too, was threatened 
with blindness. The zapatero came, having dined at a 
friend’s house. 

A good deal of farm produce was being prepared for the 
train. There were crates of chickens, which were thrown 
about from hand to hand; but some unfortunate turkeys 
were not even as lucky as the hens. About twenty of them 
were packed loosely into a large net bag. The porter 
picked up each bag and, the turkeys squeaking loudly, 
pitched it up to a man who was standing in the truck. The 
bags were packed one on the top of another with a total 
lack of consideration for the turkeys’ feelings. There is 
no S.P.C.A. in Spain. 

Jan told the zapatero that if he were coming to Murcia 
he could give him an address which might be useful. He 
then wrote Antonio’s name and direction, which the zapa¬ 
tero accepted almost with reverence. Jan went off to the 
ticket-office, while I, aided by the zapatero, found a car¬ 
riage in the train, which had just arrived. The gipsy 
woman came with us; and an old man also got into the 
carriage. Up and down the platform a hawker was walk¬ 
ing with a broad basket over his arm. He was selling thin 
circular cakes. I bought five, one for each person in the 
carriage. The old man accepted the cake which I offered 
him, took a large bite, ruminated for a moment over it and 
remarked: 

“These cakes value nothing.” 

The zapatero and the gipsy woman each took a bite. 
Opinion seemed unanimous. I then bit in my turn. The 
cake had a queer taste: it was something like a thin cold 


256 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


muffin flavoured with cayenne pepper. The gipsy woman 
collected the cakes, each with a bite out of it (like the mad 
hatter’s saucer), and put them into her basket, saying, 
“Oh, the children won’t grumble at them.” But I was 
determined that Jan should have the experience. 

As he came out of the ticket-office he was intercepted by 
the cake-sellers, who said to him: 

“Senor, you have a wife, who is a remarkable woman.” 

The old man turned to the zapatero. 

“Who are these people?” he demanded. 

The zapatero began to give an account of us. 

“They are painters,” he said; “they travel about the 
country making pictures with paint and brushes, not with 
a machine. Not content with that they are amateur mu¬ 
sicians, and can play. There are their instruments. But 
better than all this they can read and write; and what is 
more I can prove it.” 

With an air of pride he drew from his bosom the card on 
which Jan had written Antonio’s address. 

The old man took it. He perched a pair of horn spec¬ 
tacles on his nose and read the address through from end 
to end. 

Then he handed the treasure back solemnly to the 
zapatero. 

“And very well done too,” he said. 

We said good-bye to the zapatero, and the train drew out 
of the station some two hours late. Gradually the night 
darkened. There was a long wait at Alcantarilla, and we 
arrived at Murcia within the four hours’ limit which one 
must place on the Spanish time-table. We left our van 
luggage to be collected in the morning, and carrying our 
instruments in our hands walked back to the Paseo de 
Corveras. 


CHAPTER XXVn 


MURCIA—LAST DAYS 

N EXT morning we sent Marciana to tell Jesus, tlie 
water-carrier, to bring our registered luggage from 
the station. After a long delay she came back say¬ 
ing that no luggage with a number corresponding to that 
of the receipt was to be found. We set off through the 
mud to the station, and after having suffered from some 
lack of courtesy on the part of one or two of the clerks we 
were able to convince ourselves that Jesus had spoken the 
truth. Our luggage, consisting of a suit-case, a rucksack 
and a hold-all, containing all our warm clothes, our paint¬ 
ing materials, all our drawings of the past five months, 
was missing. We were assured that we had nothing to be 
anxious about. The next train from Lorca would arrive 
about six-thirty, and the things which must have been left 
behind at Lorca would come on by it. But the Spanish 
reassurances had no foundation, the baggage did not come, 
and the baggage officials confessed themselves astounded. 
“Such a thing,” they said, “has never happened before.” 
The station-master, a short, portly, grumpy fellow, at first 
refused to listen to our complaints. When at last we com¬ 
pelled him to do so, he shrugged his shoulders and said, 
“It is a fatality.” After some pressing, however, he con¬ 
sented to telegraph to Lorca, and to telephone to Alcanta- 
rilla, the junction. 

The next day no news was forthcoming of our luggage, 
and the station-master was hostile. He saw in us persons 
who were troubling the peaceful round of his easy duties. 
The other station officials said plainly the baggage had 
gone to Madrid by mistake, or perhaps to Cartagena. 

257 


258 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


But neither Lorca, Alcantarilla, Madrid nor Cartagena 
would confess knowledge of our errant luggage. We were 
indeed in rather an awkward situation. We had reserved 
just enough money with which to travel homewards, but 
were now faced with the prospect of a long stay in Murcia 
waiting till our luggage was found and, if it continued 
missing, with the purchase of many necessary articles 
which we now lacked. For instance, we had no boots, hav¬ 
ing made the journey in alpagatas. 

By this time, of course, Antonio, and indeed, through 
the agency of Marciana and of Jesus, the whole quarter had 
learned of our misfortune. Antonio arranged for a meet¬ 
ing with a clerk of some commercial firm. This clerk's 
chief occupation seemed to be the pestering of the Spanish 
railways for lost objects, and he entered with gusto into 
our affair. He made us work out a list of our losses and 
added on a thousand pesetas to our total, which he said 
was ridiculously underestimated. Then we went, backed 
by Antonio, to the railway station. 

“What do you want?” snarled the station-master, as he 
saw us appear once more. 

“These Senores have come to make a claim,” said 
Antonio. 

“Ha ha!” said the station-master, grinning. “They 
won't be able to do so. They are foreigners, and will not 
be able to write it out properly.” 

“Pardon me,” answered the clerk. “I am here to write 
it properly in their names, and they will sign it. This will 
be sufficient.” 

After a short argument the station-master gave way. He 
took us into an office and spread out before us a large book. 
It seemed that the railway companies had made ample pro¬ 
vision for recording losses. 

The clerk opened it, tucked up his sleeves, squared his 
elbows, and in careful orthography began to shape on the 
page a complex document, full of Spanish equivalents for 


MURCIA—LAST DAYS 


259 


“whereas” and “wherefore.” When the signing was com¬ 
pleted we went home. 

“I have given them a week in which to find the luggage,” 
said the clerk. “After that delay is over, they will have 
to pay you. Even if the luggage is recovered the day after 
the week is up, you may refuse it, and demand the cash in 
its place.” 

We went home to count up our diminishing resources. 
“Here is a week,” said we, “here are two pairs of boots.” 
We had heard rumours of boats which travelled round the 
coast, and understanding these to be cheaper than the rail¬ 
ways we made inquiries; but Murcia was just too far from 
the sea to be interested in shipping, and we had to give up 
the idea of reaching France by this means. 

Murcia was bitterly cold during those days of waiting. 
Our warmer underclothes were lost with the luggage, and 
our friend’s house, wonderfully cool on the hottest day of 
summer, was frigid in the damp, rainy autumn. We had 
nothing to do, for all our materials were missing, and one 
could not make excursions on foot, because the roads were 
deep in mud. So we waited, shivering, until we could 
escape from a country which had no suitable appliances for 
warming its chilled inhabitants. 

We at last came to the end of the week’s grace, and the 
luggage had not appeared. So, finding that the process of 
extracting payment from the railways was going to be a 
long one, we decided to give Antonio a power of attorney 
to manage the affair for us. We were assured that pay¬ 
ment would certainly be made eventually, though with a 
little delay. Antonio took charge of arrangements to draw 
up the necessary papers, while we set to packing what re¬ 
mained to us of luggage, including the large Sevillian basin 
given to us by La Merchora. At last everything was ready; 
on the following day we were to sign the papers in the pres¬ 
ence of a lawyer, and the next day we were to set out for 
Alicante by the morning train. 


260 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


On the morning of the last day, while we were sewing 
La Merchora’s Sevillian basin into a huge rush basket 
which was to protect it from damage on the journey, we 
looked out of the window and saw, somewhat to our dis¬ 
may, a fat, familiar figure strolling along the pavement. 
The bootmaker had arrived from Lorca hunting for work. 

In spite of a feeling of gratitude which we entertained 
towards him for the help he had given us at Lorca, we 
could not but wish that he had come at some other time. 
Our day would be as full as we could well manage. The 
complications which might be added by having to dance 
attendance on the zapatero filled us with dismay. To our 
relief the bootmaker sauntered on towards the town. Self¬ 
ishly we hoped that he would leave us alone. We had 
told Antonio about him, and both Luis and Flores had 
promised to help him to find work when he arrived. 

Commissions called us into the town, and we slunk along 
the streets, spying for a portly form. But upon our re¬ 
turn we met it, coming out of Antonio’s house. Our Fate 
could not be avoided, so we asked him in to a simple lunch, 
at which we put before him, amongst other things, a large 
dish of especially selected olives which we had bought to 
take back with us to England. The zapatero approved so 
much of our taste in olives that, to our dismay, he almost 
finished up our store; and in consequence we had to waste 
more of our precious time in buying a new supply. We 
might indeed have saved ourselves the trouble: we were 
fated to reach England without olives, for the bottle hold¬ 
ing them was afterwards forgotten and left in a railway 
waiting-room. After lunch we dismissed the zapatero, 
hinting to him as broadly as we could that we now had a 
lot to do, but that we would be delighted to see him at about 
seven o’clock, by which time our business would be 
over. 

However, when at three o’clock we called at Antonio’s 
house to bring him to the lawyer’s office at which the power 
of attorney was to be signed, the zapatero was sitting com- 


MURCIA—LAST DAYS 


261 


fortably in one of the rocking-chairs awaiting our arrival. 
We suggested to him that we had business to attend to. 
He replied that he would accompany us into the town. 

So Antonio, the clerk, the zapatero, Jan and I set out for 
the lawyer’s office. We had expected the bootmaker to 
leave us on the threshold, but he stalked gravely in our 
rear, and introduced himself to the lawyer’s clerks as a 
friend of the family. The lawyer’s office was a large apart¬ 
ment with a black and white tiled floor, at one end of which 
was the clerk’s table and at the other that of the lawyer. 
He was a thickset man covered with a huge golfing cap in 
loud checks. Over his head was suspended from the ceil¬ 
ing, with outstretched wings, a stuffed and dilapidated 
eagle from which generations of moth had stolen all hint 
of beauty. We discovered that this eagle, in some form or 
another, is the recognized trademark of the lawyer. One 
is tempted to wonder if this bird of prey hovers thus em¬ 
blematically over the head of the man of law as a sort of 
symbolic warning to the simple-minded peasants. 

The legal preliminaries were brought to a stop by the 
discovery that Jan had forgotten the passports; so, while 
he set off in a hurry to get them, we sat around in an un¬ 
comfortable circle. Meanwhile the chill from the tiled floor 
crept upwards through my feet. To break the silence the 
lawyer began to pay me the usual compliments on my 
Castilian. Immediately in came the zapatero. 

“She is a talented lady,” he exclaimed. “Not only does 
she speak English in addition to our language, but she can 
paint pictures, and play on musical instruments. These I 
have seen and heard myself. Furthermore, she has other 
talents: she can read and write, and so can her husband. 
In case you do not believe this latter statement I can 
prove it.” 

Whereupon he pulled from his pocket the address which 
Jan had written for him at Lorca and, unfolding it with 
some solemnity, placed it on the lawyer’s desk. The latter, 
perceiving nothing humorous in the zapatero’s action, read 


262 TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 

the writing gravely and handed it back with expressions of 
approval. 

But the arrival of Jan with the passports by no means 
seemed to satisfy the lawyer. He turned the papers over 
and over and said that with these nothing could be done. 
After much difficulty we discovered that no justice could 




be claimed in Spain unless one were registered at the muni¬ 
cipal offices. The tax for registration depended upon one’s 
station and possessions. There was just time, with luck, 
to get ourselves registered before the offices were shut; so, 
fearful that we should miss another day, we hurried 
through the narrow Murcian streets, led by Antonio and 



MURCIA—LAST DAYS 263 

1 

followed by the bootmaker. On the way a sudden doubt 
attacked Jan. His passport name is Godfrey Jervis, but 
he generally signs himself by his pen-name of “Jan.” 
Thoughtlessly he had signed the claim in the station book 
“Jan” and was afraid that if this name was not entered 
in the other papers a legal flaw might be entailed. The 
municipal registry office was a long, dark passage pierced 
with small, square, deep-set pigeon-holes and about large 
enough to admit the passage of a head. Through one of 
these holes we made our claim, asking for tramps’ certifi¬ 
cates—the cheapest of all. My municipal paper was filled 
in easily enough, but we had a tough struggle to induce the 
official to alter “Godfrey Jervis” to “Jan.” 

At first, as is official habit, he was hidebound, but in 
Spain by persistence one can achieve anything. In turn 
Jan, myself, Antonio and the zapatero, thrust a head 
through the hole adding urging to expostulation. Luckily 
the passport name was not very clearly written, and at last 
the official admitted a compromise: he put “Godfrey Jan,” 
and our spirits rose once more. 

Back we went to the lawyer’s office, where, with some 
delays, and the expenditure of eighteen pesetas, we turned 
Antonio into our representative against the railway com¬ 
panies. We may add that one year and six months have 
passed since then; we have since paid twenty-two pesetas 
more for another document; and a few months ago we were 
informed that possibly our case would come up for settle¬ 
ment next year. 1 

Before the night was over we also learned to our satis¬ 
faction that Luis had found a job for the zapatero, and that 
Antonio had got him a bedroom at the small confectioner’s 
in a street close by. 

i At the time of going to press we have just received a message from 
Spain. The Spanish authorities announce a happy ending to the trouble. Our 
luggage has been discovered at Alcantarilla, four miles from Murcia, where it 
has been all the while. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


THE ROAD HOME 

W E set out on our journey home next morning. The 
bootmaker, who arrived at the house almost be¬ 
fore we were dressed, came with us to the station, 
where he presented us with a large packet of angels-hair 
cakes as sustenance for the journey. This favourite 
Murcian delicacy, made from the inside of a gourd, has a 
stringy consistency and a sickly flavour. The zapatero had 
secured them “on tick” from the confectioner’s where he 
was lodging. As we take leave of him, we may summarize 
his subsequent history as we drew it by hints and half-made 
revelations from Antonio and his companions. I am afraid 
that the zapatero’s account of his departure from his vil¬ 
lage may have been invention. In Murcia he revealed him¬ 
self as a man who was work-shy. He borrowed money to 
get his tools, he got advances on his wages, he arrived late 
to work, he ran up a large hill at the confectioner’s; and 
then, one fine morning, decamped. This much we gathered. 
Antonio would never tell us, but I believe that he himself 
paid the confectioner’s bill after the zapatero’s disappear¬ 
ance ; hut to what extent our friends had suffered we could 
never learn. 

As we had just finished breakfast we put the angels-hair 
cakes into our haversack. But under the strain of travel 
the flimsy paper bag in which they were packed went to 
pieces, the angels-hair spread itself in fibrous stickiness all 
over the contents of the haversack. We felt no gratitude 
to the zapatero for his parting gift. 

Our resources, despite an extra hundred pesetas bor- 
264 


THE ROAD HOME 


265 


rowed from Antonio, were at a low ebb, and, after some 
tedious searching of a Spanish railway guide, we had de¬ 
cided to make our way home up the east coast of Spain to 
Barcelona and thence to Paris. This route was cheaper 
than that through Madrid. In addition, we could travel 
by night, spending our days in the towns, and thus dodge 
the expenses of hotels. We travelled, of course, third class 
because of cheapness, and because of the interest which was 
always to be found amongst one’s fellow passengers. The 
journey was cold on account of our thin clothes, and in 
spite of our hopes the carriages were so full and the inter¬ 
changes of passengers so frequent that we could get no 
sleep. After two days and nights we reached Barcelona 
worn out, having passed through Alicante, Valencia and 
Tarragona, but too weary to get interest or amusement 
from any of these towns. 

We arrived at Barcelona on a chill morning and set out 
from the station to look for the British Consul, whom we 
wished to consult about our lost luggage. Barcelona is 
large, and we waited for a tram. A passer-by told us that 
our waiting was vain. There was a traffic strike in prog¬ 
ress and neither tram, omnibus nor cab was to be had. We 
would have to walk. Bad luck seemed to have reserved 
her efforts for the last few days. 

We do not think that England realized the great interest 
excited all over the world by the sufferings of the late' 
Mayor of Cork. While his fate hung in the balance people 
would stop us in the streets of Murcia, or even in the out¬ 
lying villages, to ask us if we believed that there was a 
chance of his recovery. He had died shortly before our 
homeward journey began. The Northern parts of Spain 
see a parallel between their position and that of Ireland. 
Indeed, the parallel is not exact; rather one might compare 
them to the position to which Ulster fears to be relegated. 
The fact remains that Catalonia and the Basque countries, 
the hard-working, commercial parts of Spain, object to the 
domination, laxity and misrule of the Government of 


266 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Madrid. I believe that the party which wishes independ¬ 
ence, the Spanish Sinn Fein, is very small; but it has become 
mixed with socialistic propaganda, communism, and so 
forth. At any rate, Barcelona, combining as it does the 
excitable nature of the Spaniard with the organization of 
a working community, provides the field for a series of ex¬ 
tremely unpleasant strikes, riots and demonstrations. The 
transport strike was an illustration of this. During the 
two days we were in Barcelona, three employers were shot 
in the streets by employes. 

To return to the Mayor of Cork. His death was the 
signal for a typical demonstration in Barcelona, in favour 
of the Sinn Fein and of the Irish Republic. England was 
for enough away to remain undisturbed. The English 
Consul was at hand. When we reached his house we found 
that all his window-glass had been smashed in sympathy 
for Irish freedom. 

At a first glance Barcelona does not seem to be a Spanish 
town. There is something Germanic about it. Sitting in 
the main square and watching the people pass by, one could 
well imagine one self 4 in some town on the German border 
of Alsace. 

We remained in Barcelona two days, recovering from the 
fatigues of the journey. On our last afternoon, as we were 
strolling through a narrow back street, our attention was 
caught by a window full of small figures, baked in clay, 
highly coloured and gilt. The figures were all those of 
saints and biblical characters, not depicted in the formal 
manner of religious moments, but in a familiar and home¬ 
like way. We went into the small shop and asked their 
purpose, and were told that these figures were for Christ¬ 
mas decorations. We bought two—one of the Blessed 
Virgin hanging on a line a chemise which she had just 
washed, the other an incognita lady saint with a distaff 
and a cat. 

We had taken up our quarters at a small, disreputable 
lodging-house opposite the station, where they charged us 


THE ROAD HOME 


267 


the exorbitant fee of two pesetas a night each. (We sus¬ 
pect that the real price was one peseta). The night- 
watchman got us out of bed at three o’clock, as our train 
left at half-past four in the morning, and the preliminaries 
to Spanish travelling are complicated. 

To our surprise we found but a small queue of people 
waiting at the ticket-office. Our immediate neighbour was 
a shabby man in a bowler hat from beneath which showed 
the curly black hair of an Italian. He was accompanied 
by a middle-aged bustling bourgeois. The bourgeois took 
a ticket, which he handed to the Italian. We then de¬ 
manded tickets to the French frontier at Cerbere. 

“We cannot hook you to Cerbere,” said the clerk; “the 
railway bridge between Figueras and Port Bou has been 
damaged. It will not be passable for three days.” 

We thought drearily of having to return to the lodging- 
house, of three days more in this large, transportless town 
of Barcelona, of again getting up at three a.m. 

At this moment the Italian came to our aid. 

“From Figueras,” he said, “there are motor-cars which 
will carry the passengers over the frontier. You can get 
along that way easily. ’ ’ 

So we booked to Figueras. 

The Italian accompanied us and revealed his history. 
He was wandering about, looking for work. He had 
crossed the frontier on foot from France. His papers 
were in a queer condition, and some of them he had had to 
leave in the custody of the frontier officials as a guarantee. 
But there was no work in Barcelona, so he was going back 
once more. The bourgeois was an employe of the Italian 
Consulate, who had come to the station to pay his fare and 
to see that he really left the town. 

The train rolled along through that rich Catalan scenery 
depicted in the landscapes of Jose Pujo, and at about ten 
o’clock we reached Figueras. With some difficulty we 
found a boy and a hand-cart, by means of which we could 
transport our luggage to the diligence office. The road 


268 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


was uphill and deep in a clayey mud. The poor boy tugged 
and pushed, and Jan had to go into the slime to help him. 
Through a long, narrow, old-fashioned street, Figueras 
opened out into a plaza planted with tall lime trees, the 
fallen leaves of which made a sodden carpet on the ground. 
The dead leaves seemed to give the dominant note of 
Figueras, a note of exhausted melancholy. 

Misfortune, as has so often been said, is sometimes good 
luck in disguise. More “get on or get out” passengers 
had forestalled us with the car, notably a fussy man 
who, dragging with him two or three musical instrument 
cases, was loudly informing everybody that he had a con¬ 
cert engagement somewhere in France and that his career 
would be blasted if he did not fulfil it. There was no seat 
left for us. We turned to the boy and asked him to find 
us some sleeping place for the night. 

“There is the Grand Hotel,” he said. 

“Do not talk to us of grand hotels,” we answered. 

* ‘Grand hotels are institutions which level humanity to a 
dead datum of boredom and mulct it of expensive fees in 
the process.” 

“Claro,” responded the hoy. 

“Take us to some local pub,” we continued, “where the 
stranger rarely intrudes.” 

The hoy, forcing his cart uphill, led us down a side street 
to a small wine-shop, the woodwork of whose windows had 
recently been painted a gay violet hue. We pushed our 
way inside. A man with beady eyes, , who might well be 
called “black-complexioned,” curtly demanded our busi¬ 
ness. On our request for a bed be scanned us from head 
to foot. We were indeed somewhat respectable, having 
travelled in our best clothes for fear of another accident to 
our luggage, wishing, if such occurred, to save the best we 
had. The dark man turned to a woman who had a kind 
of hard, crystalline beauty, and consulted with her. At last 
the woman said in a coarse voice: 


THE ROAD HOME 269 

“They can have a room if they will take their meals 
here.” 

To which we consented. 

The Italian had been following us, vainly begging us 
to walk over the frontier with him, but as we had still a 
trunk, two rucksacks, and the large Sevillian dish in its 
basket, his suggestion did not seem feasible. So we finally 
said good-bye to one another, he setting off again on foot 
for France. 

We were sitting over our coffee after lunch, when the 
black-eyed host came near, drew a chair close up to us, 
stared at us with perplexed brows for a moment, then said, 
suddenly: 

“I know why you have come here.” 

“We have come because the bridge is broken,” we 
said. 

He waved this aside. 

“You need not mince matters with me,” he answered. 
“I can see, I have two eyes. I have plenty of opium up¬ 
stairs.” 

“Opium?” 

“Yes, you can smuggle it over to France quite easily 
from here.” 

“But we are not smugglers.” 

“I’ll let you have it cheap,” answered the host, closing 
one eye. 

We again protested the entire innocence of. our traffick¬ 
ing, but obviously did not convince him. He knew that 
people in our condition did not come to his shanty for 
nothing. He renewed his attack after supper. 

< < Why have you come to my dram shop ? ” he asked. 

“Because big hotels are dull,” we answered. 

He shook his head. 

“You have some reason for wanting to get to France 
secretly,” he persisted. “Your papers, for instance, are 
not in order.” 


270 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


We protested that they were. 

‘‘You need not be afraid of me,” went on our host. “I 
am quite trustworthy.” 

We replied that in spite of the high opinion he had of us 
we had done nothing to deserve it. 

“Let me see your passports,” said the landlord. 

“I knew it,” he went on, as soon as he had examined 
them. “You have not been vised at Barcelona. You will 
not be able to get over the frontier. They will turn you 
back.” 

We had understood that no vise was necessary to get 
back into France. He said that we were mistaken. 

“This is where I can aid you,” said the host. “I can 
get you over the frontier, so that you need not pass the 
customs or the passport office at all. I have a special route 
by which I pass French deserters to and fro. Of course, 
as you are not really dangerous, I would only charge you 
a small sum—say forty or fifty pesetas apiece. For the 
deserters the charge is considerably higher, as the risk if 
caught is considerable; while if you were caught you would 
only be sent back again into Spain. One of my men would 
drive you up at night, and then at about four o’clock in the 
morning you would dash over the frontier. I have sent 
hundreds to and fro.” 

We must confess that the adventure attracted us. We 
had just enough money left to pay for the passage, but one 
thing deterred us. We had with us all the pictures which 
we had painted in Spain. If we were captured these would 
possibly be confiscated, and this was a risk we could not 
cheerfully face. We told our host that we would take a 
day to think it over. The next day we decided that if the 
bridge were repaired within two days we would go to 
Cerbere and try the normal course, but that if the delay 
were longer we would take the deserters ’ route. That day 
at Figueras was so tedious that we mutually shortened our 
probation by a day. On the morrow, however, we heard 


THE ROAD HOME 


271 


by chance that the bridge had been reopened and that a 
special train would pass through Figueras at eleven o ’clock. 
It was then half-past ten. Jan rushed to pack, while I hur¬ 
ried to our host to find some means of transport. I found 
him giving his small child a ride-a-cock-horse on his foot. 
To my news he answered that it was impossible, that we 
could not reach the train, that it was a train-de-luxe and 
terribly expensive, and so on. 

After a long and aggravating demur he suddenly turned 
to me. 

“All right,” he exclaimed. “If you will do it, it shall 
be done.” 

He hurried me round a series of back streets, routed out 
an old man and a donkey-cart, and in a few minutes the 
luggage was packed and we were off to the station. It was 
a close race. Jan ran on to get the tickets. I remained 
with the old man and the donkey. We had been told to pay 
the man a peseta; but he expostulated at the wage, demand¬ 
ing three. We held firm, however, and at last, with sighs 
and groans of despair, the old fellow was going off, appar¬ 
ently as heartbroken as though a near and dear friend had 
died. We called him back and added twopence-half-penny 
to his shilling. He immediately broke into wreathed smiles 
and patted us cheerfully on the back, wishing us a good 
journey. 

At Cerbere our passports were refused. We had to go 
back to Port Bou, where the French Vice-Consul stamped 
them and, with the loss of another day, we were once more 
on our way to Paris. The night journey from Cerbere to 
Paris was terrible. Owing to the loss at Lorca we were in 
thin summer clothes, the temperature was three degrees 
below freezing point, owing to some defect in the apparatus 
the carriages were not heated, and a bulky market woman 
thrust her hand through the glass of the window; so that 
for twenty-three hours a freezing draught searched every 
cranny of the carriage. 


272 


TWO VAGABONDS IN SPAIN 


Amongst our lost luggage had been our winter hats, 
and we landed in Paris, much to the amusement of the 
Parisians, wearing Panama hats in the middle of 
November. 


THE END 




































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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 






















































































































































































































































































































